Book: "Traditional innovation: Qian Zhong-shu and modern Chinese letters" (3)

Theodore Huters, Traditional innovation: Qian Zhong-shu and modern Chinese letters, (PhD dissertation, Stanford, 1977)

In Chapter 2, "The Shift to Iconoclasm," Huters continues the method of the previous chapter (parts one and two) of looking in detail at representative texts of literary theory, this time by Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun, and others searching for literature's best role in a crisis.

During the late 1910s and early 1920s, the KMT enforced stringent controls on literature, student uprisings and other domestic unrest were rampant, and so the small segment of the Chinese public that could read and discuss the role of arts and literature in the plight of their nation were justifiably distressed, gloomy, and often contradictory. Zhou Zuoren exemplifies all of these traits, and one more that is representative of the early 1920s, a retreat to conservative Confucianism (as, for example, in undervaluing the novel, especially Shui hu zhuan) under the guise of supporting the new literature that affects practically every single writer from the period. Lu Xun personifies the gloom of the writer in this period, reaching a "zero point" that Huters justifiably calls "pathetic."

Flag going up on UMD campus, ~8am, Sept. 20

These and other writers sought a role for writing that could be something more than a "frivolity," without aping the "totalizing" didacticism of traditional Confucian literary theory; the tension between the two perspectives is the defining issue in literary theory of this period (perhaps any period?). During the 1930s, the split widened. Ambitious writers like Mao Dun having to choose to emphasize their social content above the autonomy of literature. Contrariwise, some socially conscious, yet lyrical, writers like Shen Congwen found themselves pigeonholed on the "right," an effect of the rigid critical atmosphere.

Reading List:

Huter's diagram of the evolution of the critical atmosphere in this chapter would make a fine one-semester class syllabus, or at least the backbone of one. (Compare to Kirk Denton's book)

• Leo Lee on this Romantic Generation of writers
• Chen Duxiu 文學革命論
• Mao Dun 甚麼是文學? ; Galik's work on Mao Dun
• Zheng Zhenduo 新聞學觀的建設 ; Pollard's work, which includes many articles
• Zhou Zuoren 源流 (full title?)
• Zhou Zuoren 人的文學
• Zhou Zuoren 平民的文學
• Zhou Zuoren 自己的園地 1929
• Lu Xun's 吶喊 preface; also Pollard and Lyon on this figure.
• Lu Xun, 革命時代的文學
• Lu Xun, 我怎麼做起小說來
• Gu Jiegang's sketch, all in The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, tr. Hummel
• Mao Dun, Cong Guling dao Dongjing, also tr. Yu-shih Chen, defensive about being a writer and a participant in social movments. 
• Lin Yutang in "Little Critic," November 13, 1930, on leaving academia and doing positive work
• "Zarathustra and the Jester," January 1931, "Verily, I say unto you, I have found the best use for my wisdom in this city, and that is babbling..."
• C.T. Hsia's negative evaluation of Lin Yutang's career in his History, 134