摘 要

悲剧是中西方文化中一种常见的文学体裁。而“复仇”是悲剧中一个经典的话题。中西方在各自的历史进程中创造出各有特色的以复仇为主题的文学作品。莎士比亚的悲剧《哈姆雷特》与纪君祥的杂剧《赵氏孤儿》便是各自复仇文学中的代表作品。同为复仇文学，但由于社会条件的差异，其表现形式会有诸多不同。本文在绪论部分首先对悲剧这一文学形式做了简单介绍，并总结了国内外学者对这一选题的研究现状。论文的第二部分介绍了《哈姆雷特》与《赵氏孤儿》的主要内容以及各自的创作背景。文章的第三部分通过对两部作品进行对比，分析了它们在复仇过程、复仇的法律意识、复仇的时间观念以及复仇结局的差异。文章第四部分是总结。通过对这两部作品的分析，能够感知中西方悲剧文化不同的审美角度。

关键词：悲剧；复仇；哈姆雷特；赵氏孤儿

Abstract

Tragedy is a common literary form in western and Chinese culture. Revenge is a classical theme in tragedy. There are quite a few literary works with the theme of revenge both in Western culture and Chinese culture. Hamlet and The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao were the representatives of revenge literature. Because of the differences of social condition, these two works have some differences though they have the same theme. In the first part, this paper makes a brief introduction to tragedy and concludes the situations of scholars at home and abroad for this topic. In the second part, this paper introduces the main contents and the backgrounds of these two works. In the third part, according to the comparison between these two works, this paper analyzes the differences of revenge process, legal consciousness, time concepts and revenge endings. The fourth part is conclusion. According to the analysis, people can appreciate the difference of aesthetics on tragedy.

Key Words: Tragedy; revenge; Hamlet; The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Background 4

2.1 On Hamlet 4

2.2 On The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao 5

3 The differences of revenge in Hamlet and The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao 8

3.1 The Process of Revenge 8

3.2 Legal Consciousness of Revenge 9

3.3 The Time Concepts of Revenge 10

3.4 The Ending of Revenge 12

3.5 The Reasons of Differences 13

4 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

On the Theme of Revenge as Seen in Hamlet and The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao

1 Introduction

The word “tragedy” originated from ancient Greece. Lu Xun has said: “Tragedy is to destroy beautiful things for people to see.” Tragedy is developed from the odes in the prayer service for Dionysus. In tragedies, it is inevitable for the characters to suffer from frustration, failure even death. As a form of literature, tragedy reveals the conflicts between human’s mental world and the actual world (Chu, 1933). And tragedy has been popular with people around the world since it was born. It is a truth that Western drama derived from the tragedies of ancient Greece, and tragedy is the oldest drama form. The three great writers of tragedy in ancient Greece are Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus. Their works such as Medea, Oedipus the King and Prometheus Bound have important status in the history of literature. During the era of Renaissance, the dramatists who were represented by William Shakespeare put tragedy to a peak. Tragedy can also be recorded and found in the history of ancient Chinese literature. Some great works such as Snow in Midsummer written by Guan Hanqing, Butterfly Lovers, and Peacocks Southeast Travelling are widely known not only in China but also around the world.

Generally speaking, tragedies can be divided into four types which include tragedy of heroes, ordinary people, family and fate. Despite all this, tragedies are quite different in the patterns and contents of manifestation between western literature and Chinese literature. In western literature, tragedies reflect desperation of humanity and helpless struggle from the perspective of philosophy. By contrast, the themes of Chinese tragedies reflect more on reality. Coincidentally, the theme of revenge appears both in western and Chinese literature – one is Hamlet whose author is Shakespeare, the other is The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao whose author is Ji Junxiang.

For tragedies, quite a few scholars have made deep and specific researches. Comparative study is a frequently-used method. For example, a passage written by Cheng Zhaoxiang which was published on the Journal of Peking University (Philosophy amp; Social Sciences) made a comparison of tragic characters between western and Chinese tragedies. Ye Yu, a postgraduate student made a comparative study between western and Chinese tragedy ending. These researches above are made from the macroscopic view. Besides, some scholars have also made microscopic researches. For example, Sun zhongwen studies the aesthetic characteristics of western and Chinese tragedies from the perspectives of conflicts and values in a tragedy. A lecturer called He Huibin studies tragic spirits of western and Chinese tragedies. In his opinion, the protagonists in western tragedies would scarify themselves to resolve conflicts while the protagonists in Chinese tragedies would be forbearing before conflicts broke out. From the viewpoint of western and Chinese literatures with the theme of the revenge, a doctor of literature called Yang Jie in Nanchang University makes a comparison of Hamlet and The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao in the description of process, the main character’s philosophy as well as the outcome against different backgrounds of western and Chinese cultures. Furthermore, he explores the social environment at the time when these two works were created and the prevailing civilization in ancient times.

The viewpoint of western and Chinese literatures with the theme of revenge is worthy of an in-depth study which includes the differences in the description of revenge process, the main character’s psychology and the results after revenge. The profound cultural connotations can be revealed according to such studies. Some significant factors such as different social environments how to influence western and Chinese tradition in literature and the prevailing civilization in ancient times can also be explored.

This paper will use some methods in the category of comparative literature.

On the one hand, there are plenty of information and historical records to represent the situations in which Hamlet and The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao were created. According to the comparison of these evidence, the causes, the results and the main conflicts between characters can be clearly and logically listed. Therefore, the similarities and differences of these two tragedies will be clear at a glance. During this process, the method called Influence Study will be used.

On the other hand, the study of literature cannot be separated from other disciplines including history, psychology and ethics. This method is called Transdisciplinary Research which also belongs to the category of comparative literature. It is necessary to learn the history of Renaissance in Europe. During that time, humanity was released and humanism prevailed. The main conflict at that time was between the feudal class and the rising bourgeoisie. Hamlet is an epitome of that period. The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao was created in Yuan Dynasty but it derived from the story of Zhao, a noble family in the Spring and Autumn Period. The earliest record of this story appeared in Records of the Historian written by Sima Qian. Studying on literature, in a sense, is studying on history. Furthermore, the study of the reasons why Hamlet hesitated when he was going to kill the murderer who had killed his father and why the orphan Zhao waited for about twenty years to kill his enemy cannot be separated from psychology (Di, 2017).

2 Background

Though Hamlet and The Little Orphan of the Family of Chao are both tragedies on revenge, they have rendered totally different results after taking revenge. In Hamlet both aspects of the contradiction went towards death. But in the latter, the aspect of justice ultimately defeated the evil through a hard process. This paper will focus on the comparison of western and Chinese historical environment and backgrounds to analyze the reason why the results are different on the same theme.

Until now, there are a lot of scholars who have concentrated on these two works from the perspectives of theme and figures of speech but without contrast.