| Abstract |
The subject matter of this paper is about Zheng Guangzu’s Zhougong She Zheng (Zhougong as a Regent), but it will firstly discuss about the genre of “Yuan historical play.” The definition of “historical play” made by contemporary scholars is not sufficient to include the distortion of the history existed in most Yuan plays, and that’s why this paper inclines to extend this genre, giving it a wide-open name instead, “the historical-story play”, which could contain the differences and distances between “historical records” and “historical plays”. Then, among Yuan historical-story plays, Zhougong She Zheng is an extraordinary case, because its plot and story follow Shang Shu (The Book of History), one of The Five Classics. This paper will analyze Zheng’s writing strategies showed in political propaganda, historical parallels, and literary metaphors. On the one hand, Zheng had written some plays involved of the thoughts of anti-Mongol’s rule; on the other hand, Zheng wrote this play as the adoration to Mongol empire for pursuing his own prosperity. The double-minded purpose seemed to be contradictory, but it was correspondent in his deep mind. From the comparison between this play and mid-Yuan politics, we found Zheng’s terminal purpose was always the same: the respect of Han culture and the identity of Confucian ideals.
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