Vorobei O. Lao She' works and Chinese spoken drama in the first half of the 20th century

The thesis is the first research of the peculiarities of Chinese spoken drama of the 20th century in Ukrainian literary criticism. The research is devoted to the process of spoken drama' origin and development, its characteristics and special features, the evolution of forms, the development of new genre paradigm, as well as the role of relations between literatures (especially the influence of modern European drama). It also reveals the influence of traditional literature on the development of spoken drama. Drama takes the very special place in Chinese folk literature - among all it is the most famous and favorable. After the downfall of Qing dynasty in 1912 and due to the strong influence of western culture, in China there was originated and began to develop Chinese spoken drama. This new form of drama initiated not only the dawn of new era, but created the foundation for further development of Chinese literature either. It influenced the stimulation of process in the traditional theatrical art of the first decades of the 20th century, as well as in the artistic experiments of the playwrights properly in the genre of the spoken drama. Lack of literary critical works, devoted to the spoken drama, helped a lot of playwrights in their creative search. There were made many attempts to draw closer China's new genre to the Chinese recipient. Due to attraction of Chinese traditional plots (Tian Han), poetic symbols (Cao Yu) etc. Therefore, due to contextually-described, comparative-historical methods and philological analysis the specific character of genre's variety of modern Chinese spoken drama is searched (historical drama by Tian Han, poeticized drama by Cao Yu, epic drama by Lao She), which were formed on the basis of author's experiments in the sphere of literary genre's and forms diffusion. New impulse to the development of Chinese spoken drama was given by Lao She, who was the first one used literary forms' diffusion and created almost new genre's form in China viz epic drama. Lao She's epic drama was in conformity with world drama standards, while traditional elements made it more understandable for Chinese audience. The thesis deals with literary research of the peculiarities of Lao She's dramaturgic heritage. The object of the dissertation deals with Lao She' most famous dramas - "The Teahouse" and "Long Xugou". Special attention is paid to the combination of epic and dramatic origins in the plays of Lao She, who originated new genre's variety in China - epic drama. The thesis deals with genre's peculiarities of Lao She's epic drama.