A comparative study of Chinese and Western tragedies——Take “The Orphan of Zhao” and “The Orphan of China” as examples

Abstract

The miscellaneous opera Orphan Zhao, written by the Chinese Yuan Dynasty opera singer Ji Junxiang, has undergone a long period of circulation and adaptation. The work contains the traditional Confucian moral spirit and the values of advising the good and punishing the bad influencing the French writer Voltaire to write Orphans of China, which promoted the exchange of Chinese and Western cultures and the spread of the Chinese culture to the rest of the world. These two classic literary works reflect the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western cultures behind them. This paper uses the comparative research method to study these two works, based on cross-cultural theory, combining the texts of the two works, analysing the cultural differences from collectivism and individualism, the change of antagonists, dissecting the causes of the cultural differences, and analysing the cultural similarities from the comparison of Confucian morality and the values of good and evil.