A Tentative Analysis of Difference of Revenge Between Chinese and Western Classical Literature: In the Case of Hamlet and The Orphan of Zhao

Abstract

Revenge is a cultural phenomenon that almost prevails in the various nationality ethics. There are many tragic works with the theme of revenge in Chinese and Western literature. The tragedy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the drama of Ji Junxiang’s The Orphan of Zhao in the Yuan Dynasty are outstanding representatives of the classical Western and Chinese tragedies with common theme of revenge.

Although Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Ji Junxiang’s The Orphan of Zhao have the same revenge theme, people are more aware of big differences about the theme, tragedy aesthetics and cultural backgrounds, which differentiate the periods of social development, cultural traditions, national aesthetic awareness, historical cultural backgrounds and other aspects. This paper will employ the Parallelism Methodology to compare these two tragedies from four aspects, including the tragic theme, tragic figure, tragic conflict, and tragic ending. The purposes of this paper are to help readers gain a deeper understanding of characteristics and significance of these two kinds of tragedies and to delve into the effect of cultural background of literary works to explore some common laws about development of all national literature.