The Aesthetic Turn Of Chinese Contemporary Literary History Writing(1978--2000)

Hu Shi put forward from the perspective of literary evolution that “every era should have it's own literature”,and in the same way,every era should have it's own literary history written.In modern times,Yan Fu introduced the theory of evolution into China in his translation of the Evolution and Ethics.The introduction of this idea had a great influence on the compilation of the history of Chinese literature,and it also became the guiding concept first applied to the history of modern Chinese literature.With the transformation of the society,the view of literary history of class theory,which examines the development and progress of literature from the perspective of class struggle,has gradually replaced the view of literary history of evolution and become an important guiding concept of literary history writing.Under the guidance of this view,the writing of literary history has established a set of strict evaluation mode and entered into the state of "integration".Excessive restraint and repetition make literary history gradually end.In the late 1970 s,with the convening of the third plenary session of the 11 th central committee of the communist party of China,starting from the modern view of literary history,literary researchers put forward the aesthetic concept of literature,which requires re-examining the writing of literary history.However,what is the background of this writing requirement of "aesthetic" of literary history put forward? Where does it lead the writing of literary history? These problems are worthy of attention,and should provide some experience for the present literary history writing.This paper begins with the aesthetic principles of literature put forward by the literary history circle in the 1980 s,taking the literary history texts between 1978 and 2000 as the research object,buy using literature research and comparative analysis,Through the horizontal comparison of literary history texts in the same space and the vertical comparison of diachronic texts,explore the reasons,significance and limitations of the aesthetic turn of literary history writing.This paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter discusses the different characteristics of contemporary literature in different periods from the development of literary history.Contemporary literature and modern literature are inextricably linked,so it can be said that modern literature is themother body of contemporary literature.At the beginning of writing,contemporary literature history does not have certain independence,so the reference to the standard of writing history of modern literature becomes its inevitable fate.However,contemporary literature is a process of continuous development and improvement,and it has gradually established its own discipline norms in constant exploration,forming a trend of development from political monism to aesthetic pluralism.The second chapter,from the perspective of ideology and theory,explains the conceptual impact of "rewriting literary history" on the writing of contemporary literary history.Theoretical thoughts are the important support of literary history writing,which can directly affect the appearance and direction of literary history.So,to reconstruct literature history means to use new ideas and ways of thinking to re-examine and discover literature.Driven by the historical view of the enlightenment literature,"rewriting the history of literature" pays attention to the "aesthetic" and "historization" of the history of literature,and changes the perspective of the history of literature from political determinism to the personalized display of the main body,advocates opening up the longitudinal connection of the history of literature,and advocates the overall pattern of the history of literature writing.The third chapter analyzes the aesthetic turn of literary history from the writing of contemporary literary history.In the 1980 s,the slogan of "returning literature history to literature" and "rewriting literature history" challenged the old view of class theory on literature history.In the specific writing practice,the staging mode,the critical idea and the writing style revealed the close to "the esthetic nature".The old and new modes of literary history creation have been colliding with each other,and new literary history works are coming into being.The fourth chapter analyzes the reasons why literary history writing changes to aesthetics.Combined with the historical background of the late 1970 s and early 1980 s,this paper points out the root cause of the change of contemporary literary history.Both the renewal of literary theory and the continuous improvement of the discipline of literary history,including the diversification of writers' creation,have brought great impact to the writers of literary history.They see a wider range of literature and a greater variety of approaches.However,the writing standards of literary history limit theinduction and evaluation of new texts,so,the reform of literary history writing is imperative.The fifth chapter discusses the significance and reflection of the aesthetic turn of literary history writing in order to achieve a dialectical thinking.The new concept of writing history of literature opens the door of writing history of literature and promotes the diversification of writing history of literature.However,in their eagerness to break the monotonous pattern of writing history,some scholars have aesthetic for the sake of aesthetic,rewriting for the sake of rewriting,and refuting for the sake of refuting,advocate one level,depressive another pole,lack dialectic and calm,there is another degree of bias in writing literary history.