世界戏剧分类新思维 ——呼唤后亚里士多德时代的到来

Since the beginning of the 21st century, there have been increasing doubts and criticisms in the Chinese academic community, which can prove that Wang Guowei's definition of opera as "performers of songs and dances to tell stories" is indeed wrong and has practical harm. An important manifestation of this harmfulness is the inappropriate dramatization of Chinese opera. The study of Chinese opera must end the era of Wang Guowei and open up a new era as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Wang Guowei's mistake has a global cultural background. Over 2000 years ago, Aristotle's discourse in his Poetics that plot is the soul of tragedy has been expanded to become the standard of drama worldwide. The world still stubbornly adheres to the concept that drama must be based on story plot as its soul, but in reality, this is not the case for world drama, including Chinese opera. There are a large number of drama works in the world that do not have story plot as their soul. This article attempts to classify world drama into two categories based on whether the plot dominates the entire drama and whether the plot is the soul of the entire drama work. Human drama can be roughly classified into two categories: one is "drama dominated by the plot", or "drama with the plot as the soul", also known as "Aristotelian drama", represented by drama today; Secondly, it is a type of drama that is not primarily based on the plot of the story, also known as a drama that does not have the plot of the story as its soul. Operas, dance dramas, and musicals (including Chinese opera) belong to this category from a systemic perspective. This article analyzes the reasons why the concept of "drama that does not take the plot as its soul" emerged so late in drama studies, and believes that using the "four level subdivision method" to analyze the plot can help us more deeply grasp the essential characteristics of the plot in drama. This article also explores the classification of so-called “plotless” theatrical works.