The Handsome Beau Drifts Away,Peach Blossoms Remain like Previous Days——On the Three Dimensions of Depicting"Rise and Fall"in The Peach Blossom Fan
The Peach Blossom Fan is a tragedy written by Kong Shangren,a playwright of the Qing Dynasty,depicting the rise and fall of history.Set against the historic background of Emperor Chongzhen's suicide on Meishan Mountain at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the downfall of the Hongguang minor imperial court,the play revolves around the love story of Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun,narrating the turbulent fate of a group of individuals ranging from nobles and scholars to artists and servants,conveying a strong emotion toward the rise and fall of history.Previous studies on the tragic art of this play mainly focused on the object of the"peach blossom fan,"but neglecting its lyric art,spacial focus,and imageries of the fisherman and the woodcutter.Yet these three dimensions are worth of exploration.First,the deliberate use of allusions such as"Six Dynasties"and"the Wang's and the Xie's"in the lyrics contains the strong implications of the feeling of decline;Second,the scene focus of the"Meixianglou Tavern"is the place where the love of Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun blossoms and fades,a place which transitioned from a lively gathering spot to a cold and deserted site;Third,the conversation between the fisherman and the woodcutter as the end is arranged actually as an abstraction of history into an objective aesthetic target,further enhancing the tragic sense and creating a surreal effect by the sharp contrast between bloom and doom and between prosperity and downfall.With these three dimensions layered on each other,the writer Kong Shangren successfully immersed the audience into the tragedy of history through the prop in the play—the peach blossom fan.
Kong ShangrenPeach Blossom Fantragedyrise and fall
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