Abstract: Wang Guowei's pioneering work History of Traditional Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties is both a theoretical summarization of his studies on opera and a systematic exposition of his stylistic thoughts. Influenced by Western studies and inherited from Chinese academic tradition, the book reviews the classification, naming, features, origins of this genre and the debasing social attitude to it, and proceeds to highlight the genre with a strong consciousness of stylistics. It delineates the evolution of Chinese opera from the perspective of stylistics, and proposes that Chinese opera has integrated features of patterns, observable stylistic development from narrative to speech-acting, and unique combination of acting, speech and singing. It argues that Chinese opera may be called as opera in its truest sense as it presents the story through singing-dance, the language form of speech-acting, and natural and significant style, and eventually it presents a pure opera with logical construction and realistic theme. Wang Guowei's book started the writing of Chinese opera history, built the framkework of Chinese opera research, defined the stylistic features of Chinese opera, determined the stylistic implications of Chinese opera, and founded the discipline of Chinese Opera studies.

Key words: Wang Guowei; History of Traditional Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Chinese opera as a genre, Chinese opera theory, stylistics, stylistic forms