Yang Zhensheng And Chinese New Literature

Around 1919, Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi and others together launched the May Fourth Movement vigorously that advocated democracy and science. Being an important part of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, the Chinese new literature revolution bred the Chinese new literature with the characteristics of modernity. The development of new literature relies on many modern literature writers, critics and educators. Yang Zhensheng was such a person who made outstanding contributions to it. As time went by, Yang Zhensheng may have been forgotten in Chinese modern literature history gradually; however, his contributions should be remembered.Yang Zhensheng’s contributions to the development of new literature lie in three aspects. Firstly, his novels enriched the literary creation at that time. At the beginning of the new literature movement, Yang successively published several short stories in The Renaissance, such as Fisherman’s Home, A Soldier’s Home, a Chastity Woman, Lao Wang who worked in a Stone Mill. Later, he published a novel called Yu Jun. His short stories and novels caused a great repercussion at that time, which brought a breath of fresh air to the literary creation and promoted the development of new literature at the same time. Secondly, Yang Zhensheng made a great contribution to the disciplinization of the Chinese new literature and its introducing into college classroom when he was a Chinese literature professor in the university and on other administrative duties. Yang once served as a professor of Chinese literature in Tsinghua University, Qingdao University and Southwest United University. He also served as director of Chinese department of Tsinghua University and headmaster of Qingdao University. Thirdly, Yang found and trained many new talented writers, providing a great number of reserve forces for the development of new literature. As a senior literary editor at that time, he was responsible for editing Modern Review, Journal of Literature, Week of Literature and Art of Ta Kung Paper, Modern Corpus and so on. He fostered and cultivated many new literary talent. Meanwhile he took advantage of his prestige and position to unit the vast majority of literary circles. What he had done was to promote the development of new literature.