Literary History 1980

1980, the key year of transformation both in society and in literary concepts, enjoys great importance in the history of the Chinese literature for its exhibiting great differences from literary concepts compared with the previous and also it points out the new direction of creation in peaceful ages and to some extent, opens up a new field for the later literary creation.With the arrival of the peaceful ages, the long-time-existed struggling concepts formulated during the warring chaos began wading and was replaced by that of moderation and smooth. 1980 is the very year of this turning point. This moderate and smooth creating mental state, to some extent, represents the main trend of creating mental state of the contemporary literature. And it is just this transformation of creating mental state that makes the contemporary literature exhibit a contrary developing direction against that of the modern one. The literature creation was no longer seeking short-term successes and quick profits, and the fighting songs were no longer sung highly which show that literature creation begin to step onto its regular routine way of describing the daily life of the common people without political interference.The chaos caused by wars make the social functions the main part of literature creation while its basic characteristics and features of appreciation of the beautiful, on the contrary, is neglected. This irregular tendency of "political standard first" becomes graver until it reaches its summit during the Cultural Revolution period. Only in 1980 did this tendency begin to change with the representation of the artistic standard and stressing on the appreciation of the beautiful.Just since literature of May 4^th , the very beginning of the modern literature, the introduction of the western culture was stressed. However, with the escalation of foreign invasion, the conflicts between China and the foreign powers became the principal contradiction of that time. To meet the need of the Anti-Japanese invasion war, literary...