Reversion

In Chinese contemporary literary history, Liang Shiqiu could not jump to a conclusion easily. What he had said was criticized by Lu Xun and other people, but his prose made him famous. This thesis will try to sort out Liang's literary thoughts objectively. This thesis comprises four parts. Part One: Formimg of Liang's thoughts. The basic of Liang's thoughts is Confucianism. He believed in golden mean and caste system and did not abandon what had been out of date. He thought the missing of the tradition resulted in the crisis of modern society. He wanted to change the society by getting back the traditional systems, so he took up Babbitt's new humanism. Babbitt advocated to going back to the tradition too, the core of his thoughts was the sense controls the feeling. Beside this, Liang accepted Carlyle's thought of hero worship. He thought it is few persons who created the world. Both the tradition and Babbitt's theory made Liang regard revering to type as his own task.. Part Two: Theory of the whole literature. Liang's thoughts had some characteristic: he emphasized the sense but looked down on the feeling, identified with aristocratism but argued against popular literature, cried up universality and fixity but excluded character and progress. He said that we should take back such theories, for example, the literature originated from ritual, what it imitated is ideality, cultivating our spirit is the effect, the author should be virtuous, the cominenter must be a man of good judgement. Part Three: Theory of single type of literature. About poetry, he objected the campaign of colloquial poem, wished poems could create Chinese new poetry by drawing lessons form foreign and Chinese ancient poetry. About fiction, he advocated it is narrative, truly, we should encourage composing river novel. About opera, he thought Beijing opera enjoyed popular support, so it will not disappear in some time. But what he appreciated is drama, he believed that only by reading the playbook could produced result. Liang is a great writer. He disserted the prose should be true, elegant and brevity. He fulfilled his assertions. Part Four: The value and limitation. Liang's humanity is absurd because of neglecting diversity and pursuing humanity of super class and era. But if we investigate those thoughts in diachronic angle, they are valuable. Some thoughts, such as taking good care of the tradition, analyzing the effect of literature, noticing some lasting factors, are valuable to us. The tradition can be inherited, but it can't get back absolutely.