Seek Freedom Restrictions

Being prose school of great importance in history of modern literature, Lunyu School is formed in Shanghai in the1930s and it is characterized by writing humorous spiritual essays As liberal literature in the1930s, Lunyu School advocates literary autonomy and free-thinking which is very incompatible with politics, economy, culture and mainstream literature at that time, therefore, Lunyu School is subject to all sides. However, in that situation, the camp of Lunyu School grows rapidly and Lunyu School literature develops greatly, forming far-reaching thought of humorous and leisurely essays. In this thesis, the author intends to study the relationship between Lunyu School and various factors, the limitation to Lunyu School, the counter-measures that Lunyu School adopts and to explore literary significance of the Lunyu School,which is very helpful to today’s literary creation.On one hand, the literary selection of particular schools is based on its literary tendency; on the other hand, it is influenced by this social environment of the times as well. The various factors of an era such as politics, economy, culture, literature all have deep impression on Schools. Being in the different places in the social structure, the factors have different influence in ways and strength on particular schools. To explore the limitation to Lunyu School and its counter-measures, the paper adopts the theory from Bourdieu’s literary field, referring to literary form in the1930s as literary field and politics, economy, culture which are at a higher social level as power field, places the process of being formed and literary activities in the web consisted of literary form and power field and analyses its dilemma, breakthrough ways, achievement and limitation during the process.The Introduction discusses significance, researching history, breakthrough, innovation, researching methods and researching mentality of the topic.The first chapter centers on explaining the process of being formed of Lunyu School. The author regards Lunyu school forming as a dynamic process, analyses the underlying connection between Lunyu School and various kinds of liberalism literature resource and Liberalism writers’ combination methods and reasons in new historical requirement. This chapter attempts to explore that, even though liberalism literature is out of turn in the30s, Lunyu School can rapidly develop and strengthen and become a force to be reckoned with in the literary field in the30s because Lin Yutang etc. publish journals, Unite writers by means of the conditions provided by the field. The second chapter analyses the Lunyu School’s limitation from power field and the way of breaking through the limitation. The chapter discusses how Lunyu School surpasses the monitoring from political power, avoids the infiltration from commodity economy and refuses the discipline from mainstream culture, holding that Lunyu School used humorous remarks for political criticism to avoid overcontrol of political power, to remain the independence of literature with the help of the extrapoliticial writing, to succeed in getting involved in publishing with the help of semi humanity semi commercial periodical management, to get rid of the control of economic capital and to construct reasonable tolerant modern culture and promote the diversified development of culture by enlightenment culture against the despotic culture.The third chapter explores the way and process of the establishment on Lunyu School’s literature legitimacy. The paper concentrates on the construction of Lunyu School’s literature theory and thinks the literature theory on Lunyu School’s ambitions and spirituality pointing to freedom is against contemporary instrumental literary theory and different from the ideas of other liberal school. To enter for the competition in the literary field, Lunyu School adopts novel way stating the theories so that it is inevitably criticized by various forces. Lunyu School competes essays with leftists for escaping lawful crisis from criticism and established the legitimacy of ambition literature.The fourth chapter deals with the creation on the essays of Lunyu School and analyses its achievement in literature. The writer thinks that Lunyu School establishes stylistic form of essays after absorbing the resources on prose widely and the creation from the writers of Lunyu School represented the form. With rich subjects and free form, the essays of Lunyu School corresponds to readers’ expectation, which is widely accepted and imitated by readers and then succeeds in entering for literary field. In the same time, Lunyu School successfully achieves the classicizing of essay, thereby occupying position in the literary field.The conclusion makes a summary of the significance on literary activities from Lunyu School, states the contribution to literary development and progressive ideas in seeking its freedom and the limitation of Lunyu School in ideas and behavior. The paper holds all this can provide beneficial inspiration for today’literary creation.