The Traditional Culture Of Zhou Zuoren Zhou Zuoren Road

Based on a survey of reading history of Zhou Zuo-ren in his early days, the thesis trys to reveal the inner logic posed by traditional chinese culture on Zhou Zuo-ren's thought, writing and important choice in his life.By following up the development of three key clues in Zhou Zuo-ren's life: "Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism thought", "individualism" and "national sentiments", the thesis divides Zhou's life from his born(1885) to the Sino-Japanese War(1937-1945) into five phrases to present and expound the details.Chapter 1 casts a look on Zhou Zuo-ren from 1885 to 1911. The shaping of his Confucianism thought and acceptance of foreign thought, with that traditional culture provides a pre-understanding are the focus.Chapter 2 pays attention to Zhou Zuo-ren from 1911 to 1917. In this period he rebuilt the connection with traditional culture and fall into reverie, but had to get away for the decline of his scholar-official family in rural society, and made his way in modern city. From then on Zhou Zuo-ren depicted his hometown through ancient books and dreams.Chapter 3 examines Zhou Zuo-ren during New Culture Movement (1917-1926). He advocated "literature of human being", which combines individualism and humanitarianism, soon deviated to individualism. He promoted ideological revolution as well. He criticized Taoism and Confucianism according to the concept of civilized-barbarian in cultural anthropology to keep a distance from traditional culture. Meanwhile, he confirmed Confucianism even returned to tradition through comparing Confucianism with ancient Greek civilization. Confucianism brought ancient superstition to reason, that was like the activity posed by poet and artist to reject the dreadful elements in primitive religion. Confined to his awareness of traditional scholar-official, the thoughts and literary opinion of Zhou Zuo-ren took on double feature combined new and old, radical and conservative all along.Chapter 4 focuses on Zhou Zuo-ren from 1926 to 1933, who traced the development of the new literature. On account of his individualism and national sentiments, he rearranged the pedigree of ancient prose writers and experienced a change from admiring the familiar essays in the late Ming Dynasty to praising highly essays of scholar in the Qing Dynasty, while it was well-known for providing inspiration to his writing. Chapter 5 keeps track of Zhou Zuo-ren hiding in the shadow of tradition from 1933 to 1945. He took the trend of pragmatic thinking during the late Ming and Early Qing as an approach to build a pedigree of three-worthy persons (Wang Chong-Li Zhi-Yu Zhengxie), which centered on anti-orthodoxy theory. Thus naturally he turned from national integrity, propriety and justice valued by Idealist Philosophy of the Song and Ming Dynasties to nominal Confucian combined with actual Taoist, which aims for personal survival. Although this change deactivated his psychological line of defense so as to serve national enemy, formidable mental stress made Zhou Zuo-ren revert to cultural tradition for comfort and basis of his words and deeds.Through positive survey and presentation, the author of the thesis expects to bring forward the research of the relation of Zhou Zuo-ren and traditional culture, leaving from general review or impression. At the same time hope it can be used for reference, when it comes to inheriting and promoting traditional culture, and broadening the influence of Chinese culture.