A Study On The Aesthetic Distance In Xu Xu's Works

Xu Xu (1908-1980) was a writer who used to make his mark but has been ignored for nearly half a century. In the 1930s -1940s he was famous in Chinese literary. The charm of his literary works lies in his consciousness of aesthetic distance and the cultural features beyond time in his works obtained from the pursuit of distance emotion.This thesis analyses the outstanding features of Xu Xu's works from the perspective of aesthetic distance and tries hard to give a systematic analysis and fair endorsement to Xu's literary achievement and his status in literary history by summarizing his theory of aesthetic distance and construction of his writing methods.First, the paper sorts out Xu's understanding on aesthetic distance from the related abundant literary theories and explores the effect resulted from aesthetic distance with regards to his specific works mainly of fiction and drama, especially drama. As the characteristics of performance on the stage itself easily reflect the aesthetic distance, Xu described this aspect mostly and spent more ink in highlighting the essence of aesthetic distance in script writing. He strived to grasp the aesthetic distance in the whole from the exploration of both theory and practice.Second, it explores the generation mechanism of aesthetic distance mainly from two sides. One is the ideological foundation of generation. Xu changed his major from philosophy and psychology into literary writing, which provided a convenient condition for him to accept Western philosophic thinking and theories of psychology. Aesthetic distance is generated on the basis of Kant's "aesthetic concerns no utility" and Herbert Sidney Langfeld's "The Aesthetic Attitude". At the same time, Xu's personal temperament of loneliness and introspection and his edge life of having nothing going his way was also a life foundation, which is the other side. For these two reasons, he chose aesthetic distance and concentrated it into his own writing in the whole life.Finally it explores the construction of aesthetic distance. In order to achieve a unique aesthetic effect, Xu created aesthetic distance from mainly three-pronged approaches. Through constructing the geography estrangement between reality and fantasy, the time filtration of living here to write to each other, and the emotional filtering of staying to appreciate distance to alienate the world, he can get rid of utilitarian and enjoy the detached beauty.