Chinese Drama (Critical Survey of Drama)
Overview
Although from early times Chinese of all classes have always displayed a love for theatrical entertainments of all kinds, orthodox literary criticism generally rejected the text of a play as a legitimate branch of literature primarily because of the divorce that had taken place between wenyan, or classical Chinese, and baihua, or plain speech. Because all serious literature was the exclusive province of classical Chinese and drama was predominantly a vernacular medium so far as linguistic expression was concerned, the play enjoyed no respectable literary...
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