On The Left - Wing Literary Movement From 1927 To 1929

Due to the dominant position of the Chinese League of Left-wing Writers in past modern Chinese literary histories, the leftist literature movement during1927to1929was usually simplified as the preparatory stage of the League. This simplification not only neglected a wide range of activities of leftist writers in the specific situation, but also deprived the possibility for us to understand their complex thoughts and responses to the social-political change of China.In this paper, based on the collected documents and materials, I would try to reconstruct the polarization and organization of leftist camp in the three years and to formulate the inner dynamic underlying this historical movement. The remapping of its social-network, ideology, organization structure, and economic-political background would enable us to step into the diversities and multiple possibilities of modern Chinese leftist thoughts and its cultural-political relationship.The failure of the Great Revolution in1927endued leftist discourse as the most appealing stream of thoughts in late1920s as well as caused a dramatic diaspora of intellectuals gathering in Shanghai which made this city a dual-center of cultural and political movement. The re-organization of many important literary societies, coupling with the constitution of literary field in the city, set the depart point and foundation of later leftist literature movements. As a production of a series of early social transformation, the "Revolutionary literature" debate offered leftist camp a platform to introduce intellectual sources, such as Marxism, to respond to their historical situation and to modify themselves and set their future agenda. Along with the polemic appeasing, the force of party came in and united the whole leftist camp in the name of the Chinese League of Left-wing Writers.In this sense, the establishment of the League not only started the leftist literature movements in1930s, but also formed as a result of the transformation happened in the recent three years. The investigation we did in this paper, therefore, maps the landscape of literary field during1927to1929as well as enables us to understand the inner complexity of the League and its characteristics in the coming1930s.