Chen Du-xiu And The New Literature Movement

As one of the initiators of New Literature Movement, Chen Du-xiu influenced the movement profoundly. He also had an great impact on modern Chinese literature and modern Chinese culture, as well as the whole development of Chinese ideology after him.His life experiences directly determine his political thoughts, content of literary concept and its revolutionary process. He is a controversial historical figure, his everchanging ideas and concepts in his living time directly determine his ties with the new literature movement, as well as his impact on the movement. Before 1920, Chen Du-xiu was influenced by the Enlightenment movement in the west and Liang Chi-chao's fiction revolution, he particularly attached importance to the enlighten sense, which is the obvious characteristic of national democratic ideology of bourgeoisie. Between 1920 and 1928, as one of the earliest generation of consciousness among the progressive intellectuals in modern China, he integrated the wisdom and thoughts of two eras. He made a significant progress in thoughts beyond the precious period, changed from a reformist of the national democratic bourgeoisie into a socialist revolutionist who was on behalf of the interests of proletariat. In the continuing process of self-denial and renovation, his thoughts stepped into a new era, that is criticism of Marxism since 1928, when Chen Du-xiu formally separated from the activities of the Party.The social environment in his age, the imperial examination system at that time and his life experiences, these together have determined his literary concept and social ideal would not be mediocre. And these also laid the foundation of such a massive literature movement which he launched. Symbolizing the beginning of the literature revolution and "May 4th " New Culture Movement, the publication of New Youth is one of the fruits of Chen Du-xiu's thoughts and advocation of Literature Revolution. Being used as the front, New Youth published Chen Du-xiu's articles, in which he animadverted on the reactionary and regressive politic after 1911 Revolution from the cultural and ethical point of view. Through advocating writing in modern vernacular Chinese and introducing with great efforts the world's most advanced literature and art at that time, Chen Du-xiu played in important role in enlightening the Chinese profoundly. Chen Du-xiu's literary thoughts mainly are as follows: initiating a new modern Chinese literature by breaking completely with traditional feudal literature; opening up a road for new literature by sweeping away the outdated conventions and corrupted customs in literatus and finishing all the decadent and conservative forces; persisting in the dominant position of vernacular Chinese in new literature, and at the same time he also points out that the struggles between the past and the present, old and new in literature revolution are a matter of principle which concerning the survival of our nation and advance of history. While it seems that his opinions are overcorrected and simplistic, but they are most consistent with the requirement of historical development.Based on his democratic position, he also raises the concepts of popular literature. Standing at the liberal side, he pays more attention to the popular disinterested art. On the new Chinese, Chen Du-xiu puts forward a scientific strategy. For instance, "writing should be in agreement with language, and vice versa" and then presents his thoughts of writing should be in accordance with language. On the aesthetic concept, Chen Du-xiu advocates emotional impulse, leads your instinct, pays attention to music and art, understands the origin of living activities, so that knowledge and human instinct can well-developed at the same time in order to achieving fully developed in humanity and society.In addition, this thesis tries to truly reflect the important role Chen Du-xiu played and the position he possessed in the literature revolution from his published articles and his social activities, as well as from his contemporaries' discussion and evaluation on him.