This thesis, with the subjects of fantastic and variable literary skills in Yuan Drama, investigated five different kinds of drama story, which are the fairy and Daoism related, the royalty and wisdom people, love and marriage, famous and complicated judgement cases, and career from ill to well. Through the investigations on their literary skills, one can understand the motivation of manipulating skills by the authors, and learn the thinking featured from these skills.
The Yuan dynasty was established and sovereign to Mongolian grassland culture for the 13th to 14th century China. Since this foreign conquer to Chinese authority, understanding of reasons of prosperity for the Yuan drama under the circumstance of politics, economics and imperial examination of Yuan dynasty was described in chapter 2 of the first part of the thesis. Through the effect of the fade of the traditional feudal ethics and the changed social situation at that time, one can realize that the performance of literary skills was affected. Many scholars of Yuan had to devote themselves to write or compose drama for the life since the Yuan authority did not follow the Confucianism and no longer hold the examinations for selecting the government officials as usual. It was believed to be one of causes for the prosperity of the Yuan drama. Another cause was due to the increase on the need of daily leisure and entertainment for the civilian. As the featured literature of Yuan dynasty, Yuan drama not only reflected various thoughts and contents to meet contemporary civil desires and expectations, but also enriched the Chinese lyric literature.
Literary skills of five different kinds of drama story was investigated in the second part of thesis started from chapter 3 successively. With the prosper of religion of Yuan, the fairy and Daoism related stories grew increasingly hereby. In chapter three, from the characteristics of illusory and variety of the fairy and Daoism related stories, the revelation of corruption of bureaucracy, and expression of the mind of hopeless and furtherly longing for escape from the living world greatly enhanced illusory and fantasy to the contents of thought. These was explored that the ordinary people were reformed by the fairy, and even guided to be the fairy for some interested in some drama. Or somebody had been reformed through ill experience or suffered almost real test with magic or body transform by the fairy. In chapter 4 “the royalty and wisdom people”, it exhibited the cruelty of politics struggle among the ruling class, the worship of the ancient royalty and wisdom people, and the darkness of Yuan political society through the fabricated and adapted stories of royal and wise characters ever existing in real history. In chapter 5, it treated drama regarded to marriage and love, which was about one to fourth in amount of Yuan drama. There were mainly three kinds of characters, namely literate and lady, scholar and prostitute, and emperor and his wives. It was revealed that female characters were brave to pursue the spirit of love and no regrets to the true love, and the abrupt change happened to royal love couples as facing the coup or different political situation, while binding thought of feudal ethics to women in Chinese tradition still persisted at that time. Through this kind of Yuan drama, the point of view of female self-awareness was clearly appeared by fantastic and variety literary skills under the special political and social environment of Yuan dynasty. In chapter 6, famous and complicated judgement cases drama presented the expectation of justice in judgement cases to remedy the missing of fair trial in reality. To fulfill the justice of civilian’s mind and to shape the image of incorrupt officials from the view of scholars, the drama performed incredible detective techniques such that a mystical dream showed one the real case by witness in the dream or accusation from the victim ghost, or the judge receiving the directions from god or unseeing Spirit. In chapter 7, “career from ill to well” drama analyzed the depression of scholars in mind and matter through the variation life encountered from poverty to rich or vice versa. At the end, a conclusion was given in chapter 8.