Analysis On Modernity Of Literary Theory Of Liang Qichao

In late nineteenth Century and early twentieth Century, with the further developmentof capitalism, the world was undergoing dramatic changes that modernity which as asocial trend originated in Europe was spreading quickly across the world. In this process,China had passively and inevitably become a recipient of modernity. At the meantime,the modernity of China was showing its own unique characteristic which iscontradictoriness. Liang Qichao, as an intellectual living in this period, has perceived thedevelopment direction of times with his keen perception and open minds. He joined inthe modernity trend in the way of literature. During this period, a series of LiangQichao’s literary views showed a variety of modernity characteristics, but also inevitablyhis literary views carried the characteristics of the times in this period.This paper aims to study the modernity characteristics of Liang Qichao’s literaryviews. In order to obtain clear and logical result, it starts from the Liang Qichao livingera and divides his life activities into four phases: before1898,1898-1911,1911-1918and1918-1929. From the studies on Liang Qichao’s literary activities and publishedarticles in every phase, we can find out his main literary view and changes of thinking.On this basis, there are some further analyses on the characteristics of EnlightenedModernity, Aesthetic Modernity as well as the contradictoriness in Liang Qichao’sliterary view. The Enlightened Modernity of his literary views is reflected in populism,democratization and scientificalness. The Aesthetic Modernity is presented in someimportant concepts in later period such as ‘fun’,‘aesthetic’, and also the aestheticcharacterization in ‘criticism of three writers’.