Gu Jiegang's Research On The Folklore Of History

Gu Jiegang is not only one of the most famous historians in China,but also a pioneer of Chinese historical folklore,whose folk thought has had a great impact on academic development in China.From the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century,China was in a critical period of social transformation with the western thoughts spreading.Under this intricate era of cultural background,Gu Jiegang realized the importance of folklore in his earlier age,because of the influence of his living environment,traditional academic thought of the Qing Dynasty,pragmatism research methods of Hu Shi,and Russian populism.Thus,in the process of the development and establishment of distinction of ancient history,he actively used his own academic literacy to establish a new field of folklore,that is,historical folklore.He advocated that the folklore should be placed in the historical process and explored the evolution and the change reasons of folklore phenomenon.Meanwhile,he carried out a number of very important academic practices and the most representative research was the Meng Jiangnu story system.Gu Jiegang's folklore research contains the view of pluralistic historical data,the view of historical evolution,the perspective of sociological theory and the folklore thought of folk opera.To a certain extent,these folklore thoughts influenced the formation of Gu Jiegang's “pile-up theory”,which laid the foundation of story research paradigm,promoted the development of other academic research in the field of historical folklore and had important academic influence on the history of modern Chinese folklore.