Folk Discourse And The May 4^th New Poetry

Folk discourse has always been repressed and screened in ancient China. Lying in the lowest rung of society, it has incrementally and continually been nourishing Chinese writers with vivid and fresh resources thus formulating another Chinese tradition. It is playing a vital role in the current transfer and transition period of Chinese socity and culture. In view to this, the thesis associates folk discourse with the previous culture transfer and transition period—the May 4th (1916-1924), attempting to comb and expound the movement and its significance in anti-tradition by studying new poetry in the movement form the angle of folk discourse.Chapter One Folk discourse and The generation of its modernity. This chapter is a study on the knowledge of folk discourse and an academic analysis of it in pre-modern period of China. The study and analysis provides an angle for us to treat folk as a fluid, open and multiple notion. Folk discourse combined together with the modern enlightenment and the expectation of a new nation from the period of the late-Qing Dynasty to the May 4th, thus generating its modernity.Chapter Two Folk discourse and "Destroying" and "Establishing" in the May 4th New Poetry. In retrospection to the May 4th, we will notice the movement's heavy borrowing of folk discourse, as a "miniature of Chinese tradition", which actually functioned as an adapting and relieving element when the new and old, modernity and tradition were in severe clash. Its aesthetic tradition was utilized and emphasized in the advocating and constructing of the May 4th New Poetry by Hu Shi and Yu Pingbo etc. who transformed it with modern notion and fused it into the theory construction of the new poetry.Chapter Three The Peking University Ballad Movement and the seeking for local resources of the May 4th New Poetry. As an integral part of the May 4th New Culture Movement, the Peking University Ballad Movement closely coordinated with the creation of the May 4th New poetry from the start to finish. Regarding ballads as Chinese local cultural resources, the great modern ballad writers like Liu Bannong, Zhou Zuoren and Hu Shi etc. all desired to obtain inspiring information from the ballads when creating the new poetry. The ballads, with the evidence from the practice of creating the May 4th, determines the forming and constructing of the May 4th New Poetry in its modern spirit, civil characteristic, appealing language and diversified verse styles.Chapter Four The Popularity orientation of folk discourse and the May 4th New Poetry. The May 4th New Poetry underwent a crisis period in spirit and art after the waning of the May 4th Movement, which foreboded a transition. Its realistic branch, with the social influences like "divine manual workers" and "joining the common people", focused on "ordinariness" and "popularity" thus "ordinary people", the subject of folk discourse, had been paid close attention to. After the May 4th movement, some elements of the new poetry like the awareness of folks, the popularity and the evolution spirit were gradually enlarged and emphasized thus launching folk forward from a general social cultural concept to a political ideological notion.When thoroughly investigating and analyzing the culture context of the May 4th chronologically, we found the adaptation and promotion of folk discourse in the May 4th New Poetry in terms of its generation of modernity, the seeking for local resources, and the pursuit of emphasizing ordinariness and popularity. Meanwhile, the thesis also discusses some questions and problems in the May 4th New Poetry triggered by the variety and limitations of folk discourse to which we owe the further understanding the complexity of the May 4th New poetry, Chinese modern folk discourse and Chinese modern literature.