The Masses Awareness And The Elite Consciousness

In the history of Chinese literature in 20th Century, popular literature has been disdained and criticized by the elite, and has been regarded as a unpresentable vulgarian, so that it was excluded from the door of literature study and history. But at the same time, it has a very broad readership, and it has such a great effect upon public readers that even the serious literature cannot compared with. On the one hand, it is enjoyed by public readers very much, on the other hand, it is looked down on by researchers. What is the reason of this strange literary phenomenon? This paper tries to make some research on the acceptance and criticism of Chinese popular literature in 20th century selectively in the perspectives of both public readers and elite readers by acceptive esthetics in order to obtain the reason. And this paper tries to reveal the true status of popular literature in the history of Chinese literature in 20th Century; and to inspect the complicated relationship between the masses awareness of popular literature and the elite consciousness of serious literature; and then to infer the trend and development of Chinese popular literature and even the total Chinese literature.Chinese popular literature has been on the edge of the literary world in 20th century because of the opposition between the masses awareness and elite consciousness, and now also should return back to the literary world and history as a result of their coexistence and complementarity between each other. Popular literature and even the total Chinese literature need both the guidance of elite consciousness and the participation of masses awareness on its way to future.