Studies On "the Renaissance"

"The Renaissance", a monthly magazine which was compiled by the New Trend Society——a colledge student organization of Peking university, was published on the january,1919.Form its starting publication to the end, it published aggregately three volumns involved twelve issues.With the other magazine such as"New Youth", holding the flag of democracy and science high, striving heartly for the May 4th thought enlightenment and literary revolution, it becomed one of the most famous magazines in the May 4th period.As a result, it has a great influence on the young students in China. However, because of reasons of various fields, there was a low recognition degree of basic study on the magazine. People applied a regular thought on studying"The Renaissance"as they did on the"New Youth".Thus, they neglected the speciality and independence itself and could not show its overall perspective fully.Duing to few achievements of studying on"The Renaissance", it is very diffiult to find the special doctor and master's dissertations about it, let alone the monographs.On the condition of lacking concerned datas, making full use of all kinds existing historical materials, such as collected works, diaries, letters and memoirs, the author will study on the entirety of"The Renaissance"and try to obtain a comprehensive conclusion. Besides, the author intend to evaluate objectively and accurately its status and contribution in the modern chinese history and then get new breakthrough.The master degree thesis is divided into two parts. There are altogether nine chapters.On the first part of the thesis, the author emphatically discusses the contributions, gains and losses of"The Renaissance"in the May 4th thought enlightenment. As a talented generation, the colleagues of"The Renaissance"were affected deeply by their teachers, at the same time, they have special value orientation and ideal pursuit different from their teachers . As a result,"The Renaissance"formed a special style, that is:"Basing on the academy, prioritizing the culture". They also had special comprehension and pursuit in the course of new cultural construction. They shouldered the dual tasks self-consciously: destruction and construction. It meaned that they should not only criticize those disadvantages of chinese traditional culture strongly, think it deeply, but also put forward how to construct our new culture. On the whole, in the concept of applying culture to save our nation, most of the colleagues of"The Renaissance"did't like to participate politics, they intended to bring up a social thoughts basis for China's political reforms through the ideological and culture reforms. Nevertheless, they were unfortunate to live in a turbulent ages, none of the minimum social, political and cultural order for realizing their ideal existed, thus their role orientation had't been supported by the relevant social environment. In addition to, they were indifferent to the social reality, therefore, their opinions were usually unsuitable for China's basic social problems. It's unevitable for them to be neglected and forgotten by our society, and it's very difficult for the masses of people to have the sympathetic respon to stheir theory as well. As a result, people didn't give"The Renaissance"a objective evaluation for a long time. We should understand it very clearly.On the second part of the thesis, the author emphatically discusses the great contribution of"The Renaissance"in the May 4th cultural revolution. In the modern chinese literature history, it published the earliest chinese morden vernacular novels, poems and essays, moreover, it also translated a large number of foreign excellent literature works.Similarly, in the course of constructing the new cultural theory, it has gotten outstanding achievements too. The vernacular novels in"The Renaissance"made chinese morden vernacular novels enter the palace of literature for life firstly. It also foreshadows necessarily for the future prosperity of literary for life. Similarly, the poems and essays in"The Renaissance"promoted chinese morden poems and essays to approach the common maturity. From today's view, most of the literary works seems very infantine and lack more aesthetic value, but we could not neglect their great historical significance and value because these literary works are the indispensable parts of China's modern literature. Without them, the long modern chinese literary history must be incomplete. There is a lot of unknown fields in the"The Renaissance"that deserve our exploition.The author intend to study on the entirety of"The Renaissance", try to value its historical significance and value objectively. History is sophisticated and multivocal, but it also has some invariable principles. We should see-through all its extrinsic images and then grasp its internal essence,. The author believe that a seek- truth- from- fact attitude and the means that one divides into two is the key point for understanding and evaluating"The Renaissance"correctly.