The Legitimacy Of Modern Chinese Poetry (1917-1926)

The "New Poetry" used to be compared to a growing trouble-making child. The metaphor can be comprehended from two perspectives: Firstly, during the procedure of its birth and process, the "New Poetry" abounds in the unconvincing problems, at some phase, the negative aspects even submerge the positive ones of the new style. Secondly, just as a growing child, the "New Poetry" is characterized by its freshness, energy, courage, bluntness and destructiveness. The legitimation issue of the "New Poetry" presented in this thesis focuses on how the new style stands on its own foot and legitimize itself against a background of strong opposition.The present thesis argues that in the context of modernism pursuit of Chinese 20th centuries' literature, the "New Poetry", on the one hand, remains connected with other literary styles in the requirement of language transformation, the attempts of thought provoking, etc; on the other hand, the "New Poetry" involves other problems of its own due to the unique way of birth and the specific poetic characteristics. The latter, needless to say, is the key research project. The legitimation pursuit of the early new poetry is the very perspective from which the problems of the "New Poetry" may be revealed more apparently.The issue of the "New Poetry's" legitimation is discussed at the following two levels: in the external discourse space and in aesthetic category. The "New Poetry" intends to achieve the authentic position by fighting against opposition criticism, self-identification, ideology-deduction and text-construction. Besides, the hot response of the media to the "New Poetry" and the widespread of the new style in middle schools are the two significant achievements of the legitimation pursuit. As for the legitimation in aesthetic category, much attention is attached on the basic art problems, the prejudiced ideology is recorrected, the concept of "New Poetry" is redefined, and active feed back is paid against the anxiety of aesthetic legitimation in creation texts and translation texts.The pursuit of New Poetry's legitimation (especially the legitimation in aesthetic category) is a flowing exploration process rather than an accomplished case. Though the impact of the New Poetry's pursuit of legitimation is submerged at early terms, it emerges gradually and apparently in the further developing stages.