Qu Yuan And The Chinese Modern Literature

This dissertation discusses the relation between Qu Yuan and modern Chinese literature based on the creative transformation of literature tradition. The study will answer how the national literature modernized and the modern literature nationalized. Chu ci that produced in the axle-time is a canon of Chinese literature, which provided the significance and the value for modern Chinese literature. The significances and the value are created by the dialogue and rhetoric of interdiscourse, intertextuality, intersubjectivity, which causes the existence of Qu Yuan in modern Chinese literature to be a psychological archetype, Charisma cult and"Xing xiang". So the thesis disserts as the following point:At the beginning of 20th century, Chinese literature sprouted the modernity in the literary concept and the creation. Criticism on Qu-Sao by Liu Shipei, Wang Guowei, Lu Xun, Liang Qichao and so on that combined with the thought of western esthetics and the art of Chu ci, emphasized the aesthetic character of the literature such as"imagination","personality","emotion"and"subjectivity", and promoted the modern literature category to create. The writers who cherished the sorrow and sadness like Qu Yuan expressed the experiences of modernity, the imagination about the modern nation-state and the modern individuality consciousness and the self- emotion in the poetry and the novel. The theory and practice that combined Qu-Yuan's tradition and modern thoughts induces the May 4th literary revolution.In the course of the foundation and development of May 4th new literature, Qu Yuan is a concernful and creative factor. The advocacy and practice of new literature which experienced the process from"the colloquial literature—the revolution in thought"to"free verse——the emancipation of individuality, imbibed Qu Yuan's poetic spirit fruitfully. The new poem's composition developed from"Chuang zao"style ,"Xin yue"style to"Xian dai"style, has absorbed the form, the style, the image ,the aesthetic style, the spirit of Qu Sao, which boosted new poem from romanticism to symbolism. The creation of modern novel represented by Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Mao Dun, Shen Congwen related to Qu Yuan in two ways: First, they have drawn Qu Yuan's prototype, the expressive means and aesthetic spirits. Secondly, they have been moved and inspired by Qu Yuan's anxiety, loneliness, hesitation, nostalgia and exile's experience.During transformation and conformity of modern Chinese literature in the 1930's and 1940's, Qu Yuan had been a kind of discourse of the times, an event of literature and a spiritual phenomenon. It revealed the tendency to development and the historical prospect of literature in the National Salvation times from the aspects such as politics, culture, art, thought, academic etc. In the review and debate around Qu Yuan, it implicated the trend of literary thought, and contained the struggle between CCP and Kuomintang in the culture battlefront. In the literature, the writers have created many national characters like Qu Yuan, and glorified Qu Yuan's patriotism. It is the response to the subject of anti- fascism and the saving the nation from subjugation.Finally, the thesis taken"emotion and imagination","symbol and expression"as a center, through the analysis of the philosophical thought, value intention and expressive techniques etc, discussed the constructive function from Qu sao to romanticism and modernism in modern Chinese literature. It appeared the dual characteristic: Occidentalism—reforming the literary tradition according to western literary thought; Siniticism—interpreting western literary thought according to Chinese classical literature.