Title：Ethical Criticism in British Drama
题目：英国戏剧的伦理批评
Abstract：For nearly one millennium of development in British theatre, it has nurtured a large number of playwrights well-known to the whole world, to name a few, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, Gorge Bernard Shaw and Harold Pinter. In fact, the British literature including theatre has never digressed from the issue of ethic. It is ethic that promotes the evolution and development of British drama. Along this tradition, there have appeared different types of drama with distinct narrative styles in the course of theatrical development of Britain, such as the medieval morality plays which are the origin of British theatre, the humanist drama in the Renaissance, the comedy of manners in the 17th and 18th centuries, the drama of social problem in the 19th century and the absurd theatre in the 20th century. Although British drama has gone through transformations of narrative style, it is clustered by the ethical concern, which formulates the unique ethical narrative tradition of British drama. The ethical literary criticism ascribes the origin of literature to ethic. Taking into account the social, historical and cultural context of Britain, this study, based on the analysis of ethical content of theatre classics, aims to summarize and generalize the characteristics and regularity of ethical narrative and ethical tradition of British drama, which presents the combination of ethic and aesthetics.
摘要：英国戏剧在近千年的发展进程中，产生了许多重要的流派，出现了莎士比亚、德莱顿、萧伯纳、品特等闻名世界的剧作家，包括英国戏剧在内的英国文学，始终没有离开对道德的关注。正是由于道德的力量，推动了英国戏剧的演变与发展。从这一传统出发，就戏剧的发展与叙事类型而言，英国戏剧有作为戏剧起源的中世纪时期的道德剧，以及文艺复兴时期的人文主义戏剧、17、18世纪的社会风俗喜剧、19世纪的社会问题剧以及20世纪的荒诞派戏剧等。它们虽然经历了不同叙事类型的变化与变迁，但一直贯穿对伦理道德问题的关注，从而形成了英国戏剧叙事中独有的伦理传统。“文学伦理学批评从起源上把文学看成伦理的产物”，结合英国社会历史文化语境，本研究在分析戏剧经典作品伦理道德内涵的基础上，归纳、总结贯穿英国戏剧发展、以伦理道德与审美艺术相结合的伦理叙事与伦理传统特点与规律。
Keywords：British drama; Ethical Literary Criticism; ethic and morality; ethical narrative
关键词：英国戏剧；文学伦理学批评；伦理道德；伦理叙事
Bio：Liu Maosheng is a professor of the Faculty of English Language and Culture at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS), a doctoral supervisor, post-doctoral co-supervisor, and “Yunshan Outstanding Scholar” of GDUFS. Concurrently he is the Chairman of the Division of Drama Studies, Chinese Association for the Comparative Study of Language and Culture, the executive member of the National Association for the Study of Literature in English, China Association of Foreign Literature, and the executive member of the Narratology Division, Chinese Association for Sino-foreign Literary and Arts Theories. He has presided over and completed two projects of the National Social Science Fund of China, two sub-projects of the National Social Science Major Tendering Projects of China, one sub-project of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research Major Project of the Ministry of Education, one project of “Research Start-up Fund for Returned Overseas Students” of the Ministry of Education, and many other ministerial and provincial-level projects. He has published three academic monographs including “The Ethical Expression of Society and Politics: Studies in George Bernard Shaw's Drama”. In recent years, he has published more than fifty academic papers at home and abroad, of which more than ten have been included in A&HCI databases. His academic achievements have won provincial-level outstanding achievement awards in philosophy and social science for four times and other encouragements.