| Among the developmental choices for Chinese cultural modernization at the beginning of the 20th century, were the cultural school of Marxism represented by Chen Duxiu, the westernization school of liberalism represented by Hu Shi, and the solitary new Confucian cultural school. However it is dangerous to take the new Confucian cultural school as a perspective for the study of Chinese modern literature. Why is it so? As the modern literature subject was established on the initial value judgment of the new May 4th culture and it is essential and prevalent to consider the cultural school of Marxism as the mainstream of modern literature, it is perhaps considered by some scholars likely to overthrow the modern literature subject to view modern literature from a kind of contrary viewpoint. In the author's eyes, however, people's view should not be limited by such a binary thinking mode that either something is on our side or on the opposite side. It is argued in this dissertation that not only should we envisage objectively the conflicts between the new Confucian thoughts and the new May 4th culture, and the alternatives for Chinese modern culture and literature supplied by the former, but also attach importance to the expansion of the new Confucian thoughts in the field of modern literature, namely, how did it give voice to itself in the contact with the West during the period when different western cultures took turns to enter into china? As to the fact that the aphasia of Chinese indigenous literature utterances was the most anxious problem in the field of literature criticism, the methodology of new Confucian culture school pursuing their studies, interpreting Chinese fundamentals via western means, offered a sample for the localization of western literary criticism. The introduction part concentrates on the correlation of Liang Shiqiu with the new Confucian movement, i.e. the rationality and necessity of studying him in the perspective of new Confucian culture. The argumentation develops from four dimensions. Firstly, analyzing the concept of new Confucian movement and beating out its discourse connotations and styles to offer theoretical background for studying Liang Shiqiu's literary discourse. Secondly, Liang Shiqiu's main discourse resource was the humanism of Irving ·Babbitt, whose expectation for the Chinese students was to complete the process of internationalizing humanism in China. The relation between Liang Shiqiu and the new Confucian movement was established in such a situation. Thirdly, although for a long time he was regarded as the whole show of the westernization school of liberalism because of his cooperation with Hu Shi for the journal The New Moon, Liang Shiqiu was actually a political liberalist and an advocate of new Confucian culture. Fourthly, considering the continuation of cultural development, the Confucian doctrines, which collected literature, history and philosophy together in the past, would necessarily develop in different independent subjects since the differentiation of modern subjects in 20th century. The development involved 3 forms, i.e. rational Confucian philosophy, Confucian ethical code and literary theory including literature and literary criticism. And Liang Shiqiu's literary discourse embodied sharp-cut characteristics of new Confucian literary theory quality in its connotation and means. The first chapter discusses Liang Shiqiu's feeling of being exotic in the field of new May 4th culture and argues that it was just such a recognition that caused him to choose Babbitt's humanism voluntarily instead of considering it as sort of foreign affect. During his pursuit for learning in Qing Hua University and U.S.A., Liang Shiqiu took a position of oriental culture or traditional culture that was different from the new May 4th culture and literature. The idea of interpreting Chinese fundamentals via western means in Qing Hua shaped the students'initial academic vein. His claim that poetry was aristocratic challenged the two authoritative laws that took literature to be for mankind or for common people. He called for the elegance and norms of poetry language and made a proposal about the three beauties of poetry in 1922 which was suspected attributable to the XueHeng school by Zou Zuoren. However what differentiated him from the XueHeng school existed in his acceptance of the essentials of the new May 4th culture and literature, including being skeptical to tradition, learning from the west, and writing in vernacular. During his study in U.S.A., through the influence of Babbitt's stress on Confucius and Confucian, Liang Shiqiu transferred his interest from the vague oriental culture to Confucian doctrines. Although Babbitt's humanism was viewed as conservatism in U.S.A, its essentials were really to put the law of humans in contrast with that of materials. Having discovered some overlaps between Babbitt's remarks and Confucian ideas in the thinking chain of modernity-Babbitt's humanism-Confucian, he began to construct his literary discourse with Chinese characteristics to express Confucian ethnic doctrines by means of Babiitt's humanistic literary criticism and classic literary criticism. The second chapter focused on the Confucian literary theory quality of Liang Shiqiu's literary discourse. In the controversy between science and metaphysics, the new Confucian school favored the metaphysical argumentation and argued against science. Such a position of observing significance and pursuing worthiness was viewed as the main characteristics of the new modern Confucian ideas. Likewise, Liang Shiqiu's discourse payed importance on the significance of worthiness and moral logos, viewed the materialism and evolutionism in literary study as the extension of the dispute between science and metaphysics in literature, and eventually formed a way of literary criticism with typical characteristics of reasons. The theoretical foundation of such a literary criticism is humanism; its major tenors include: emphasizing the dualism of human's goodness and badness; emphasizing the moral significance of regulating affection via reason; emphasizing the generality and eternity of humanity; emphasizing the three levels of life. All of these were in accordance with Chinese Confucian andespecially Confucian ethical code in Song and Ming dynasty. As a result, Liang Shiqiu, armed with modern new Confucian, debated against the new culture movement since May 4th, criticized the affective indulgence of new May 4th literature, and proposed to control affection via reason. The criticism of Marxism's materialism via humanism's idea of humanity, the debate with the left wing on categories such as abstract and commonness, essence and phenomenon, both exhibited the confrontation of reasons of value and instrument, literature of aristocratic and literature of common people. In the course of constructing the system of literary criticism, Liang Shiqiu proposed that literary criticism be correlated with ethnics instead of allowing the admittance of aesthetics into literature. He considered aesthetics formal and unable to realize the significance of values, and presently enkindled the well-known dispute on aesthetics in 1930s. The ideas of the new aesthetics put forward by the left wing, whose representative was Zhou Yang, sympathized with Liang Shiqiu's concern on reality and life. The third chapter argues about the inevitable decreasing trend of Liang Shiqiu's literary discourse. Literary discourse involves power. Because of his earlier traditional cultural positions, Liang Shiqiu became the core member of nationalists'community Da Jiang Hui and his nation-self-saving position was incompatible with the Communist International background. Becoming attached to Babbitt, the Confucian humanism turned him into a humanist who stressed that the issues of goodness and badness was determined by self-regulating of individuals, not by the combats between people. It was just this attribute that led all the new Confucian cultural schools to oppose revolution and class struggle. Consequently it was natural for Liang Shiqiu to get frequently into disputes in the background of Marxism's materialism. As a core member of the National Socialist Party, to a large extent, characterized by new Confucian culture, Liang and Zhang Junmai had a warm work with the Communist Party representatives when they attended the national congress during the War of Resistance against Japan. Under such circumstances, his statement about the irrelevance to War of Resistance could not be analyzed as a pure academic case. Being charged of standing on the side of supporting Wang Jingwei and appealing to peaceful negotiation, his opponents in the dispute didn't criticize him from an academic perspective at all. Besieged on all sides, Liang chose to hold his ground in silence, abandoned his literary criticism, and began writing his essays entitled Yashexiaopin. Both his taste of beauty condensed with life art and the elegant and healthy attribute of his essays made his essays hailed as a phenomenon in its own right in 1940s'China. As he put it, the reason that he abandoned literary criticism was just his idea of "no literature no literary criticism". On the denial of new literature since May 4th, he set about practicing his literary ideas in writings. Since 1949, the Mainland began to thoroughly remould itself from Confucian to Marxism. In such a movement, Liang's humanist discourse was misread as bourgeois'humanism and signs of reactionary ideology because of his earlier conflict with the left wing.
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