A Study On Babbitt's New Humanism Literary View And Its Relationship With Chinese Culture

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the “new” of Babbitt's “New Humanism” and to explore his literary and art views under the rule of humanistic thoughts on the basis of understanding his thoughts.In the past,domestic scholars paid more attention to the connection between his thoughts and Oriental thoughts and literary circles,and tried to restore the real connotation of Babbitt's thoughts,but neglected his artistic views.In view of this,on the basis of previous studies,this paper attempts to interpret Babbitt's whole view of literature and art.The paper is divided into three chapters: The first chapter focuses on distinguishing “humanism” from various doctrines and reviewing the meaning of western traditional humanism in different historical stages until Babbitt's new humanism was established in the early 20 th century.“Duality of Human Nature” and “Higher Will” are the new connotation of Babbitt's humanism,which runs through his artistic view of “The One” and “The Many” as well as his classical literary view.The second chapter mainly discusses the enlightenment of Confucian poetics to Babbitt's literary thoughts.Its “Moderate” and “Balanced” literary and art views correspond to the Confucian doctrine of “The Golden Mean”.In terms of ideal personality,Babbitt pursues the ideal state of perfection in life,which is consistent with Confucius' idea of cultivating a gentleman who is gentle and in line with “Propriety”.Finally,Babbitt's literary criticism works have a spirit of “Inner Check”,which takes care of the Confucian thought of “Abnegation and Return to Propriety”.The above reflects that Babbitt used Confucianism to participate in constructing his own humanistic literary thoughts.The third chapter focuses on Babbitt's view of literature and art,which greatly promoted the construction of modern Chinese classicism.Among them,“Xue Heng School” scholars studying abroad have been exposed to Babbitt's classical humanism thought,which has aroused their enthusiasm for the traditional culture of the nation.Influenced by Babbitt's “Dualism of Human Nature”,they pay attention to the study of life and take “goodness” as the first principle of artistic beauty.Liang Shiqiu was a literary scholar who was most influenced by Babbitt's theory.It can be proved in the transformation of his literary concept from Romanticism to Classicalism and his Human Nature Theory of the literary criticism.In the 20 th century,Babbitt's humanism has been accepted and absorbed to different degrees in China and the United States,which indicates that Babbitt's humanistic thoughts have cross-border value and need to be further explored.