Keeping Distance Initiative And Giving Up:Christian Culture In Chinese Modern Literature

In China, Christianity has been propagated since a long time ago, but it has never entered the world of literature. By the 20th century, there are a lot zealous concerns and expressions about Christian culture in Chinese modern literature, and due to the involvement of Christianity, modern literature has changed in significance and language form. Is this change occurred in Chinese literature by itself, or because the Christianity is not as it was? By my exploration, I believe that this historical phenomenon in literature is not an accident, but happens in a specific historical context. In the context of modernity, Christianity is stated and expressed in Chinese literature at the time. In an overview of modern literature works involving Christianity, I find that Christianity exists not only in thoughts of Chinese, but also in churches and other objects. Christianity takes one form in thoughts, also it takes the other form in real life. Mostly Chinese modern intellects express the Christianity in thought,, they introduce Christianity as a foreign cultural knowledge, taking that for granted, or use the knowledge rationally. In their works, a strong sense of Christian thoughts are sent out in selection of themes, construction of ideas, adoption of artful means, and in-building of bible stories. But displaying themes in Christianity and using bible language do not imply that the authors have religious thoughts or they are Christians. It is true that most authors select and approve Christian value rationally, but they can not give up traditional cultural factors in emotion. Thus, in hesitating and maundering they keep a distance from Christianity initiatively. A small portion of authors were intimate with Christianity emotionally and christianized once, but they were not solid enough to defense against outside political pressure and various allurements of historical philosophy. Therefore they estranged from, even gave up their believing. Lu Xun and Cao Yu are representatives of these two groups respectively.It is pointed out in this paper that the "Keeping Distance Initiative and Giving Up" history could not be treated separately, since history is also a structure of discourse. Behind the objectivity indicated by history, there exists bright ideology nature. At certain time period, modern literature circled its objective fields with discourse, set up a legal view, and established unceasingly changing historical laws and regulations acting as rules to select and discard its values. In the process of mutual interlocking and coexistence, traditional culture view, collective unconsciousness, social authorities, individual desire and so on added to a formidable field of force. Individual author consciously or unconsciously participated in creation of history. Their works undertake self significance modeling and being modeled, expressing in his words or being expressed in discourse of authorities, self representing and being constrained by authorities at the same time. Taking Christianity as a key in this thesis, by describing the change and improvement of works by Lu Xun and Cao Yu to be more valuable, this thesis discloses "the historicity of texts " and "the textuality of histories ", questions the "truth" in history, inquires about the significance authenticity and value of historical literature, because the real significance of historical literature is shown only in the process of questioning already known spirit.