Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Genesis

Author: Luan Meijian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-29
Features: Modern Chinese Literature, indeed, is an extremely special literary stage in the long history of Chinese literary tradition since the Book of Songs. The prosperity of modern journalism and publishing industries greatly improved literary dissemination methods; the abolition of the traditional imperial examination system in 1905, while changing the way talent was cultivated, also significantly expanded the author and reader base; the establishment of the royalty system allowed writers' spiritual products to be directly converted into living materials, marking the first time in Chinese literary history that there were truly professional writers. These are the fundamental distinctions between modern Chinese literature and traditional literature. How should we approach these unique literary phenomena? And how can our research establish an organic connection with the new literary landscape of this period? All critical methods and systems that focus solely on the literary work itself, such as psychoanalytic methods, archetypal (mythological) criticism, formalism, semantic and semiotic studies, structuralism, and hermeneutics, etc., may be one-sided and fail to provide a comprehensive evaluation. This is because they address the question of "why and how it came into being," rather than conducting specific studies of a particular work or literary school. Naturally, this requires an analytical perspective and research methodology that are both broad in scope and truly reflective of the relationship between this period's literature.
Here, literary sociology, which first emerged in the West, holds great inspirational value. The contemporary French critic Lucien Febvre stated: "On the one hand, literature became specialized; on the other hand, it was widely disseminated, and both reached a critical point around 1800. It was at this time that literature began to become aware of its social dimensions." Febvre made this remark while evaluating the renowned literary sociologist Madame de Sta?l. In 1800, Sta?l published On Literature and Social Institutions, the first systematic attempt to combine the concepts of literature and society, and it is hailed as a monumental work in literary criticism that specifically explores the relationship between literature and society. In eighteenth-century Europe, the specialization of knowledge led to the gradual separation of science and technology from literature in a strict sense, causing the scope of literature to shrink. However, at the same time, due to improvements in printing technology and the development of the publishing industry, as well as the gradual reduction of illiteracy, literature, which was once a privilege monopolized by a small elite of scholars, became the cultural choice of a large number of intellectuals. Literature became a means of elevating the intellectual level of the general populace. Against this backdrop, studying writers as professionals, examining literary works as modes of communication, and analyzing readers as consumers of cultural goods—this research method, which was once considered somewhat sacrilegious in traditional eyes—not only became possible but also became a necessary undertaking. Following Sta?l, particularly since the French philosopher Auguste Comte founded positivist sociology in the 1830s, the field of literary sociology gradually expanded and deepened. While continuously refining research methods in literary sociology, it also quite accurately reflected the diverse literary faces and schools in Western society.