Fourth Petty Bourgeoisie The Origin Of Chinese Literature

This paper is to study the image of petty bourgeoisie and the concerning problems in Chinese literature from the May Fourth movement to the 1980s. Since the May Fourth new culture movement, the petty bourgeoisie appeared in those modern urban societies along with the process of modernization of China. They were such a group that had more cultural capital than political and economic ones. The cultural capital is a series of knowledge and culture about Modern coming from the West countries including the Soviet Union and Japan. As the problem of petty bourgeoisie was often equated with that of the intellectual after the May Fourth movement, the image of petty bourgeoisie in Chinese literature was chiefly a reflection of the petty bourgeoisie intellectual. In the new Chinese literature after the May Fourth movement, it is natural that its texts were full of petty bourgeoisie' stand, sentiment and consciousness, as petty bourgeoisie was the main part of writers and readers. For this reason, the petty bourgeoisie could also be regarded as an imagination community made by the texts.In this paper, the introduction is to study the source and evolution of the conception of petty bourgeoisie that is a definition of social class and involves political evaluation and culture imagination. This introduction will cover the theoretical interpretation about petty bourgeoisie both in foreign countries and in China, the culture field of petty bourgeoisie, and the kinds of image of petty bourgeoisie in Chinese literature. The first chapter is to study the image of New Youth or Intellectual Youth that was the earliest image of petty bourgeoisie and participated in culture division of petty bourgeoisie, providing resources of knowledge, spirit and sentiment for the later generations. The second chapter, through the research of the image of Times Woman in Mao-dun's novels, is to study the image of petty bourgeoisie woman, involving those problem about body, time, modernity, revolution and so on. The third chapter is to study the problems of petty bourgeoisie in the Leftist literary movement, including the sentimental revelation of the petty bourgeoisie inProletarian revolutionary image, and the conflict between revolution and humanity in the heart of revolutionists with the petty bourgeoisie's qualities. The fouth chapter is to research the problem of petty bourgeoisie in the workers-peasant-soldier literary and artistic movement after the speech in literary and artistic meeting in Yan-an by Mao-zedong, including the image and sentiment of petty bourgeoisie in the imagination of new characters and new heroes, along with criticisms towards petty bourgeoisie. The remaining part is to study and describe the image of petty bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie writing in Chinese literature and vogue culture since 1990s.