A Study On The Controversy Between "Lu Xun And Mao Dun 's Letter To The Red Army"

The congratulatory letter by Lu and Mao is by no means interpreted as a pure historical event. Rather, it has coursed into the arena where political ideology battles against academic discourse. On the one hand, the letter not only concerns Lu’s crucial position in the fields of culture and history, but factors like Lu’s relationship with the Communist Party, Lu’s political stand and Lu’s personal image as well. On the other hand, the debate over the letter cannot be simplified as true-or-false issue, for there’s risen a credibility issue of Lu’s "political image" as a result of years’ deliberate building and modeling. An insightful look into debate will enable one a major discovery of the power struggle hidden beneath the history and that how ideology and leading discourse push the research of Lu Xun forward.Therefore, given the social climate and literature environment of Lu’s time, this dissertation aims at a thorough and in-depth analysis of the debate over the congratulatory letter in light of its origin, focus and meaning, and meanwhile a substantial probe into academics’ hidden mentality in the opposition between politics and culture. By keeping us clear of all the bustle of domestic research of Lu Xun, it thus paves the way for a re-examination of those issues bearing practical as well as theoretical senses amid China’s intricate cultural context.