Taine's Influence On Maodun's Literary And Artistic Viewpoint Of His Early Stage

The artistic sociology of Taine, who is the representative on French positivism aesthetics in 19th century, has great effect on the establishment of Mao Dun's early theory "art for life". Taine's basic theoretic proposition runs through his establishment of realistic theory. First, the core of Taine's artistic philosophy, that is Three Determinism: Race, environment and the epoch, directly influences Mao Dun's early "life and epoch viewpoint". Mao Dun assimilates the elite of evolutionism and Taine's Three Determinism to re-explain the essence of New Literature; accepts Taine's view of objective reality by means of historicism to form his view of " 'the real ' leads 'the beautiful and the good' " , thus settles the base of his view of epoch. Second, "the concept of Man " influences the establishment of Mao Dun's "treat Man as the origin". Mao Dun absorbs Taine's views of character and individuality to develop the theory of figuring typical character, and presents the view of " literature of Man is literature of the real" to explain the relation between literature and man, that is he maintains describing typical character in the unity of individuality and commonness. Third, Taine's syllogistic pure objective critique once was utilized by Mao Dun to revise Chinese traditional subjective literary criticism. Mao Dun choose Taine's social-history critical mode to complete the constitution of his criticism. Finally, Mao Dun's acceptance of Taine's is not all complete without any denial, but holds an attitude of successive with animadversions. He removes the coarseness and takes the elite, he also has creation on this base. In summary, Taine's theory forms a stable base for Mao Dun' view of "life and epoch" to develop along the way of realism...