Research On Liang Qi-Chao’s "Emotional" Poetics In1920s

After the return from Europe, Liang Qi-chao actively threw himself into the NewCulture Movement in1920. The European trip led to the transformation of his thought.After introspecting the science and rationality since the Western Enlightenment, hesuggested that the construction of China’s new culture should “combine” the East andthe West and “seek liberation from restoring ancient ways”. Moreover, he believed inhumanism as the construction’s spiritual core. His thought distinguished himself fromthe mainstream discourse of the New Culture Movement. Considering literature as themajor field of the new cultural construction, Liang Qi-chao again gave much attentionto literature after the era of "Three-Boundary Revolutions”. However, his literaryconcept was completely different from what he used to be in the earlier period which hetoke literature as the weapon of the Enlightenment. This also formed the dialoguebetween him and the leading trend of the literary revolution.Liang Qi-chao’s literary studies in the1920s, mainly focused on poetics, becamethe significant carrier for practicing propositions of poetics which were “training newtalents","promoting new culture", and “developing new politics”. He reinterpreted thetraditional poetry within the framework of the Chinese ancient civilization. However, hewas not content with the narrow sense of poetics. Instead, he tried to reach the all andthe one cognition of literature basing on it, which turned his poetics into a general senseof poetics. Differ from concentrating on the function of literature only in the early years,he returned to the aesthetic attributes of the literature and defined the literature from theperspective of "emotion". Liang Qi-chao’s view of emotion showed the enlightenmentmodernity side of advocating emotional liberation as well as the introspectionmodernity side of using sensibility to balance sense. He emphasized that the NewCulture Movement could not do without the emotional dimension. In addition, hepointed out that the new culture’s construction should draw lessons from the West whichused to simply focus on science and rationality in the modern development and thencaused a “materialistic and mechanical view of life”. Considering both the enlighteningand cultural factors, he took literature as the tool of "emotional education". Liangexerted himself in sorting out and elucidating the lyric tradition of ancient Chinese literature in his poetics. Based on the sublime feelings of poets such as Qu Yuan, he notonly established a model composing the main personality for the litterateurs, but alsotried to educate modern citizens, in which he specially paid attention to the function oftraditional literature that benefited the formation of the new cultural identity of thewhole nation in the cultural transition.Liang Qi-chao’s poetic system in the1920s, not only absorbed the achievements oftraditional Chinese poetics, but also drew lessons from certain theories and methods ofWestern literatures. His research possessing both forms of literary criticism and literaryhistory pulled off the combination of history and theory as well as adopted thecomparative methods of Chinese and Western literary. His poetics presented an explicitsense of methodology as well as an eclectic and open pattern.Although Liang’s poetic exploration had its limitations of the era, his uniquenesseffectively promoted the Modern Chinese poetry during its formation period. Due to hisdifference from the mainstream discourse, he enriched the plural form of Modern Poetryand provided the paradigm for the future development of the Chinese Poetics.Unfortunately, Liang Qi-chao poetic achievements in the1920s have not yet receivedadequate recognition, which needs in-depth study urgently.