Zhou Zuoren's Literary Path

Zhou Zuoren was a famous litterateur since May Fourth New Literature Movement. Strangely in 1925, he said the sign of him to be a writer had dropped off, literary shop closed. In the subsequent writing career, he repeatedly declared that he was not a writer any more. This paper will start from this overlooked detail, and describing his unique path in the history of modern literature.The first chapter discribles his literary activities, from the arrived in Beijing in 1917 to the end of 1927.In the beginning of joining the New Culture Movement, Zhou's shop front is very open, there are social activities in addition to literary writing.In 1921, his passions of advocated the "New Village Movement" have cooled, and instead he focus on "One's Own Corner", that means literary writing and criticism activities. During this period he adjusted his view of literature, from a believer of literary salvation, to become advocates "pure literature", which means the performance of individual feeling and mind. In 1925, Zhou thought that literary revolution had been successful, but the Ideological Revolution also needs to work, so he bid farewell to the "pure literature", turned to writing "miscellaneous articles". 1925-1927's works obviously showed that he was not a pure "essay" writer.The second chapter describes the debate beteen Zhou and Revolutionary Literature since 1928.Combed the relationships of his thoughts on people with Gustave Le Bon, who was a famous professor in Mass psychology. Pointed out that in this period Zhou had re-emphasized the"pure literature"opinion advocated in 1922. He also borrowed the classical "Yanzhi" concept to replace the previous statements, and thus build a complete explanatory model of literary history. Arguments with Revolutionary Literature forced Zhou gave up the work of study on people's mind, turning recluse and entered a new work among the large number of ancient books to read, write study notes, critical thinking of the traditional scholar, exploring the traditional resources.The third chapter describes Zhou's writing after 1932. From the stylistic point of view, his essays about reading, was concidered as the pioneer of "Shuhua" by the contemporary writers, but it was not true. His notes, continuing the ancient literature notes traditional, some notes have higher academic achievement. He formally proposed and perfected the "miscellaneous literary" thinking, which has been neglected in history, "Miscellaneous Literature" concept, actually docking of the ancient literary tradition. From the ideological point of view, he cleared the religious ideas, put forward as the ideological foundation of the original Confucian and into the spirit of scientific rationality, ancient and modern, re-civilization, which form a complete on the ideal of "human life".Conclusion summarizes the uniqueness of Zhou's road in literary history, and also points out that as the Enlightenment thinkers, his characteristics, achievements and shortcomings.