A Study On The Leftist Literary Theory Of The 20～(th) Century Of China

The aim of this paper is to make clear what the Leftist Literary Theory is and how it developed.As the main body of the Chinese literature in 20th century, the Leftist Literature, with its theory, has never been studied impersonally. Because of its status of the official theory, it had been praised unsuitably by 1980s. However, it was criticized severely as the source of mistakes in 1980s. And in 1990s, it was almost forgotten. But anyone who wants to learn the 20th Chinese Literature has to understand the Leftist Literature first. On the other hand, there came forth a new school named New Leftist in the debate of thoughts of 1990s. What was the relationship between these two Leftists? Can the idea of the modern Leftist be used as the resource for today 's society criticism? This paper wants to answer these questions from the view of literature.The paper not only cards the history of the theory but also analyzes it. It contains several special topics and a macrocosm description. The main body of the paper consists of five chapters, an introduction, a conclusion, and two appendixes. Chapter one studies on the literature ontology of the Leftist. It describes the debate about the idea of the Leftist which insisted the literature is a tool even a weapon of the classes, and discusses the freedom of writing, the relationship between literature and politics. Above all, it analyzes the two characteristics of the literature in Leftist theory: the class nature and the instrumentality. The author considers that all the mistakes of the Leftist literary theory came from the confusion of the literature function and its ontology. Chapter two studies on the idea of Leftist on writers during the long period from 1920s to 1970s, which contains the contents, the means and the gains of the reconstruction of the writers and the intellectual. Chapter three studies on the idea on the works of the Leftist. The study is made up with how to write and what to write, which covers the subject matter, the characters of the work, and the debate on the popularization of literature, the style of the nation etc. Chapter four studies on the means of literature creating. The study covers four means: the Proletarier Realism, the Dialectic way, the Socialism Realism, and the Subject Realism by Hu Feng. The last chapter is the macrocosm description on the object.In conclusion, the Leftist literary theory is deviated from literariness drastically. The ultimate character of this theory is the combination of literature and politics. It is only from the point of view of polices that we can realize the rationality and validity of this theory.