| dc.description.abstract | My thesis is divided into two major parts: First, Bai Pu’s life and its connection between the social context of the period he lived in. Having witnessed the demise of Jin Dynasty, Bai Pu was never an official during Yuan Dynasty. Instead, his lifelong dedication to poems and the joys of wine drinking demonstrate his reserved, dignified and non-worldly spirits. Then, it brings us the study of Bai Pu’s script titled Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjun. Li Qianjun was the heroine and the daughter of a prominent official. As her love-at-first-sight affairs between Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjun unfold, the script honors the idea of women’s pursuit of love and marriage as a free individual, which also discloses the impact of Chinese traditional “patriarchal society” on the men and women in that period of time.
The thesis attempts to look into Bai Pu’s life experience and memories, and in turn connects his life and the script Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjun, finally examines his ideas and the time’s influence over him as a scholar. Next, based on the theories of Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, as well as the formal limits of the Yuan Dynasty form of musical comedy, the paper analyses the plot deployment. It looks into the setup of the storyline, dramatic conflicts, ending and positions of the play. When commenting on comedies, the distinguished Chinese scholar, writer and poet Wang Guowei mentioned “the integrity of storyline is of little significance”, but the script's story arrangements, structure, and effects are well orchestrated and worth discussing. Also, the previous consensus held “a comedy is inevitably prone to conflicts, and thereby leads to a happy ending.” Based on this, people labeled Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjun as a comedy. However, they overlooked the emotion-inducing qualities the script owns, which happen to be much-valued indicators of Chinese traditional musical plays. The heroine experiences a great deal of ordeals in her pursuit of love, so the fact that the thesis positions the script as a comedy is subject to discretion. Last, the thesis tries to analyze the making of characters from the viewpoints of educational sociology, sociology, and family ethics. By doing so, it lends more clarity on Bai Pu’s idea, the social context of Yuan Dynasty, and finally the values of Chinese traditional beliefs. The thesis aims to render a clearer profile of Bai Pu in the context of late Jin Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty, and most importantly, the timeless impressions and values Bai Pu himself and his works have left to generations. | en_US |