Enlightenment And Beijing School Literary Pursuit

This paper focuses on the Beijing School in literature and its writings, trying to trace its clear enlightening track and the particular value of its enlightenment in the political and cultural context as well as its contribution to literature. Therefore, this paper tries to make an objective evaluation and location of this school, exploring the destination of enlightenment in China and the characteristics of development of Chinese modern literature.The author argues that Beijing School of Literature is not alienated from the society or dissociated from politics, for within the literary circle during 1920's and 1930's, writers of this school, with the enlightening political stance of liberalist intellectuals, inherited May Fourth tradition and involved in the time in an artistic way, saving the nation from subjugation. Therefore, with transcendent utilitarianism and aesthetic morality about their literary thoughts of this school, their writings present unique characteristics, which can be seen as follow: Vulgarization and trivialization in contents; Reverse enlightenment through local poetic reflection; Moral judge of metropolitan humanities and the enquiring of human inner world; Sentiments of melancholy and loneliness. The paper also holds that although this literary school unavoidably disappeared because of the flames of war, yet its existence and its enlightening pursue makes it an indispensable ring connecting Chinese modern literature in the 1920's and literature in the 1940's. An analysis of the enlightening political pursue and the characteristics of its writings is beneficial for us to understand the traits of development of left-wing literature in the 1930's; furthermore, it is also thought-provoking for us to have better understanding the enlightenment sprouted in the 1980's and the literature of this period on a new political background.