On Zhou Zuoren’s Prose Style

As a master among modern Chinese prose writers, Zhou Zuoren marks a turning point in the development of modern Chinese prose, his literary practice not only inheriting the old tradition of prose writing but also starting a new era for that particular form of literary creation. Nearly a hundred years have passed since he put forward the concept of "fine prose" during the Wusi period, and there has arisen a particular field of literary research aiming at the different types of his prose writing, which in turn has established him as a master of prose writing. It is safe to say that in the modern history of Chinese prose Zhou Zuoren ranks among those who carry out prose writing with much modern consciousness. This paper believes that the independence and rich suggestion of Zhou’s different types of prose writing can be fully revealed through a literary research from the stylistic point of view, and here are the reasons. Firstly, Zhou has tried throughout his literary life various types of prose writing including fine prose, leisurely writing, short essay and social comment, a proper classification of his prose writings may help present their general disposition and features, and reveal the literary idea beyond. Secondly, although Zhou has tried many types of prose writing, he just endows every single type with an independent literary taste of its own and at the same time trying to break the boundaries between them, making them merge into each other. Thirdly, Zhou’s prose is characteristic of a poetic style, which is managed by his individual way of language constituting and is formed in a process from "letters" to "images" and to "literary implications". And surely the forming of the style is not simply a one-way linear process, but a result of the interplay between all the three elements. Fourthly, the forming of the different types of Zhou’s prose can be seen as a reflection of his spiritual world. By analyzing the way Zhou manages to constitute the types and style of his prose and interpreting its language and information system, this paper hopes to further present how his literary idea comes into being in a gradual and dialectical way and to get an insight into both the variety and the universality of his prose writing.In short, although Zhou Zuoren has devoted his whole life into prose writing, he is never confined to any particular literary type but tries his best to develop various types in the field of prose writing, and in doing so he also succeeds in maintaining a stable and individual style, which in a broader sense plays a key role in forging the style for a whole era. And it is exactly in this sense that Zhou is generally considered to have made a distinctive contribution to the development of modern Chinese prose.