Comparison Of The Cultural Context Of East Asia Enlightenment Literature

In the middle of the 19th century, the literature of the Eastern Asia shifted from the feudal to the modern which is symbolized by the emergence of the Enlighten literature. But the Enlighten literature in different countries showed different natures because of the different cultural environment shaped by the respectively different social formation and cultural tradition although facing the same impact of the modern west civilization and invasion.This paper tries to probe into the modern cultural environment of the Eastern Asia countries, beginning with the works of the representative writers published after their embracing the west modern civilization, analyze the influences of the different cultural environment on the literary creation, and then outlining the social development reflected in the literary works.I,uxun ch'.unwon and Natsume soseki is the representative writers in the history of the contemporary literature in China Korea and Japan. This paper intends to compare their enlighten thoughts formed under the impact of the western civilization and their similarities represented in their literary works. They are similar in many ways, such as the family' s declination during the childhood, the experience of studying abroad in their youth and the enlighten literature view. This paper explains the similarities and holds that these similarities provide valuable basis for the comparative study among the three writers although they had no real contact, and even little influence on each other.This paper uses the parallel and influential method. The main content is as the following: Firstly, compares the cultural environment of the three countries when facing the impact of the western civilization and invasion. Secondly, observes the tri-writer' s absorbing of the modern western civilization, emphasizing on their youth period of studying abroad, then analyses the internal and external causes of their acceptance of the western civilization and its influences. Lu Xun is influencedmainly by Nietzsche who advocated value re-evaluation and superman philosophy, Ch' unwen by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy' s Humanism, Natsume Soseki by Schopenhaueri' s the will transcendent thing in itself. Thirdly, compares Luxun, Ch' unwen and Natsume Soseki' s enlighten literal works, revealing the differences of the tri-writers' aims and means of literal creation, and then pointing out their limitation.In short, as the comparative study of the enlightenment among Luxun, Ch' unv/en and Natsume Soseke, this author hopes to offer a few commonplace remarks by way of introduction so that others may come up with valuable opinions on the comprehensively comparative study among the three countriesæ¡Ÿhina, Korea and Japan.