On Zhou Lenga 's Novel Creation In The 1930s And 1940s

Shanghai-school Literature was an important component of Chinese Modern Literature, however, it has been paid attention by the mainland scholars just from the beginning of the ninety’s. Since Wu Fuhui’s rectification of name for Shanghai Literature, it returned to the vision of literature studies, research productions on it were obtained continually, and many Shanghai-school writers surfaced again. Zhou Lengjia’s name was also in the “various new citizen novelist” that Wu Fuhui distinguished. Zhou Lengjia was a Chinese modern writers and scholar of Chinese Classical Literature, the number and type of his creations were extremely abundant, he also actively participated in many literary debates and movements, and he contacted with many writers who Had important positions in the history of Chinese Modern Literature. But now in research community of Chinese Modern Literature, no one shows any interest in Zhou Lengjia, Wu Fuhui only used a few words like “His creations were quite abundant, but his influence is not so big ”, it’s a large deficiency and regret in the study of Chinese Modern Literature. Zhou Lengjia separated himself from “Yuanyang Hudie”-school Literature and entered new literature’s field in 1930 s and 1940 s, it was the most high-yielding period in Zhou’s career, and Zhou Lengjia is considered a Shanghai-school writer because of this period. Zhou Lengjia’s new citizens novel emerged from the womb of “Yuanyang Hudie”-school Literature, he chosen the love affair and secular life from “YuanHu”, what conformed to the trend of times and met the tastes of citizens, as main theme of his new citizen fiction, he gave meticulous and all-embracing descriptions of bottom people’s life in modern city. What’s more, the choice of destiny in his novel showed his complex artistic individuality: his identity as a “resident”, who entered the city from countryside created his literature’s duality of city and country, moreover, after entering new literature’s field, Zhou assimilated realism and other Left-wing literary theory, that made his literature to have a left wing bias. Purgatory, the full length novels published in 1936 epitomized Zhou’s three main artistic characteristics: citizen fiction, native soil novel and Left-wing literature. Zhou Lengjia’s multiple artistic individuality and his activity in the history of literature decide his significance in studies of literature works and history. Obviously, Zhou Lengjia also had his limits. His unilateral absorption to Left-wing realism without enough comprehension and blindly following to literary trends, made himself to be good at scope of art and theme, lay particular stress on exposure and reflection, but be lack of deep mining and deliberation. His unilateral malice on city also made his description of city unilateral. In addition, Zhou Lengjia positively participate in literature activity like the Controversy of “Two Slogans”, however he was quite politically naive. A part of his works had obvious character of commercialized writing. These limits result in Zhou Lengjia’s status: a legendary Shanghai-school new citizen fiction writer, who had abundant creations and lots of stories. Of course, as one of Shanghai-school new citizen fiction writers, his multiple artistic characteristics still had non-ignorable value to enrich the connotation of Shanghai-school Literature.