All The Tropes

The Peony Pavilion: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

The Peony Pavilion (view source)

Revision as of 10:15, 9 April 2014

27 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (Dai-Guard moved page The Peony Pavilion (Theatre) to The Peony Pavilion over redirect: Remove TVT Namespaces from title)
m (Mass update links)
Line 4:
{{quote|''"Love is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again. Love is not love at its fullest if one who lives is unwilling to die for it, or if it cannot restore to life one who has died. And must love that comes in dream necessarily be unreal? For there is no lack of dream lovers in this world. Only for those whose love must be fulfilled on the pillow, and for whom affection deepens only after retirement from office, is it an entirely corporeal matter.''|Preface to ''The Peony Pavilion''}}
 
Tang Xianzu's kunqu opera ''The Peony Pavilion'', or 牡丹亭 (Mǔdāntíng), was Ming-dynasty China's answer to ''[[Romeo and Juliet (Theatre)|Romeo and Juliet]]''. A lyrical celebration of romance that premiered in 1598, it ignited the Chinese equivalent of the Romantic movement-- the cult of ''qing'', or sensibility. It also spawned an outpouring of [[Fan Art]], [[Fan Fiction]], and [[Fan Wank]] in the form of readers' commentaries, making these behaviors [[Older Than Steam]]. Crazed [[Fan Girl|Fan Girls]] were said to offer themselves up to Tang on a regular basis, while the odd [[Fan Boy]] busied himself painting miniatures of the play's [[Perverse Sexual Lust|winsome young heroine]] to sell for cheap.
 
Budding ingenue Du Liniang ditches her lessons one day to take a nap in the garden. Asleep, she meets dashing scholar Liu Mengmei, who romances her in her dreams. Long after she wakes up, Liniang continues to obsess over her dream and begins to waste away from literal lovesickness. She dies, but not before leaving behind a portrait of herself at the height of her beauty.
Line 20:
* [[Celestial Bureaucracy]]: Okays Liniang's return to the world of the living so she can get her man.
* [[Comically Missing the Point]]: Liniang's tutor assigns her a bunch of love poems from the ''Book of Songs'' for her moral instruction, making her even more dreamy and lovelorn.
* [[Death Byby Sex]]
* [[Erotic Dream]]
* [[The Fair Folk]]: The Flower Spirit who watches over the lovebirds when they first consummate their affair. Liniang also gets mistaken for one when she shows up in ghostly form.
Line 26:
* [[Flat Earth Atheist]]: Liniang's father Du Bao.
* [[Flower Motifs]]
* [[Gentleman and Aa Scholar]]: Liu Mengmei. Also playwright Tang Xianzu himself.
* [[Good People Have Good Sex]]
* [[Happily Ever After]]
Line 39:
* [[Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic]]: It's a kunqu opera-- allusions all over the place.
* [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]]: The Chinese version, li (rationality) verses qing (sensibility).
* [[Shout -Out]]: To the ''Analects'', and other classical texts.
* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]: Way towards the idealistic end.
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: To ''Romance of the Western Chamber''.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/928987"