중국 초창기 화극의 명칭과 차별 - 쉬줘다이의 회고를 중심으로

Abstract

The history of spoken drama began in 1907, earlier than the May-Fourth period (1917) when modern Chinese literature sprouted. Although spoken drama is a genre of modern art distinguished from traditional Chinese plays, spoken drama from the beginning period before the May-Fourth period was not included in the range of modern literature. For this reason, it was separately treated based on different names, such as early spoken drama, wenmingxi, and popular spoken drama. Only a few groups called spoken drama wenmingxi during the times before the May-Fourth period. However, according to the memoirs of Xu Zhuodai, after the term “Huaju(話劇, spoken drama)” was introduced in 1928, wenmingxi was used to distinguish spoken drama before the May-Fourth period from that after it. Members of the Lübao(綠寶) theater created the term “popular spoken drama” to lie low and survive in a situation where they were not allowed to use the term “spoken drama.” This term coined by the Lübao group was adopted again for a while in 1957, the year of the 50th anniversary of spoken drama. Existing discussions on the first spoken drama created in China also excluded the subject of spoken drama before the May-Fourth period. Such discrimination against this spoken drama was rooted in partisanship based on the Cold War and awareness of the superiority of the elites. Thus, research on the spoken drama of the beginning period should reflect the perspective of the history of theater, which is separate from the history of modern Chinese literature, to properly evaluate this genre in terms of literary history.