Anti-modernity And Modernity: The Characteristics Of Literary Tension In Liang Shiqiu's Literary Criticism

In the critical history of modern Chinese literature, Liang shiqiu's literary criticism had always been regarded as the opposite side of the mainstream critical discourses, while in China, the "variation" had been basically a main value in the past 100 years, so it had long been a key feature of Chinese modern culture to identify or to enthrone the existence of timing . Though he didn't deny the timing and variation state of the material existence, Liang shiqiu regarded the existence of non-time and non-space as more important factors in his ideology. In fact, Chinese modern culture increasingly tended towards popularization, yet Liang shiqiu still insisted on the side of aristocratic and elite's character in his literary criticism. Because of this reason, his literary criticism obviously had the quality of anti-modernity. On the other hand, his literary criticism undoubtedly belonged to the new literature, because his practice of criticism is to establish a new type of culture and literature in order to deal with some practical problems. Therefore, on a more fundamental level, Liang shiqiu's literary criticism contained much modernity, in which his criticism had great consistency with modern culture and modern literature in many ways. In details, his literary criticism, even the whole Chinese modern culture and literature in that time advocated freedom, independence and critical quality of human individual, and urged the mode of cultural resources interaction between China and the West. In a word, Anti-modernity and modernity mutually melted together in his works which became a prominent feature of Liang shiqiu's literary criticism.In addition to the introduction, the thesis was mainly divided into two parts. In the first part, there was a basic reference frame of the modern culture's identification and appreciation of the timing existence and of the trend to popularization. Then on this basis, I tried to analyze the transcendentalism and the aristocratic tendency in order to reveal the anti-modernity in his literary criticism. In the second part, the reference criterion was the liberalism's personal value, the critical and self-reflected quality, and the mode of cultural resources melted between China and the West. Then I managed to probe into Liang shiqiu's modernity in his literature criticism. In conclusion, I combined Liang shiqiu's critical idea with the present tendency, including universal emotional worship, time worship and market worship in academic area to find out the value and significance of his critical idea, to analyze dialectically the "Goods " which was criticized in the long term, and then to discover the present value and significance of his critical ideology.