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.