History and Theory of Russian Marxist Literary Thought at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Author: Qiu Yunhua et al
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-03-01
Features: The Russian Marxist literary thought at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is a topic that is both very familiar and yet unfamiliar to the Chinese literary theory community. It is considered "very familiar" because the Marxist literary thought (along with the entire Marxist ideological system) accepted by the Chinese literary theory community throughout the 20th century was, to a large extent, actually carried out by Russian Marxists in theory and thought, and this discourse system had a profound and significant impact on 20th-century Chinese literary theory. From Mao Zedong's "Talk at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" to the highly used term after the reform and opening-up—"dialogue"—all bear the imprint of Russian Marxist literary thought. However, it is also unfamiliar because throughout the 20th century, experts and scholars in the Chinese literary theory community did not produce an independent and systematic monograph to study the Russian Marxist literary thought at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, but were merely satisfied with translating and introducing the research achievements of Soviet scholars—this may be one of the reasons why the National Social Science Fund of China included the author's project in its funding. The author's research primarily focuses on the sensitive issue of the discourse construction of Russian Marxist literary thought at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The author argues that Russian Marxist literary thought is a discourse system with its own theoretical logic and practical concerns, existing in interaction with the Russian reality of different periods, and internally, it features dialogues among various competing schools of thought.