Mou Zongsan's Criticism Of Chinese Classical Literature

Mou Zongsan,which is the leader in modern new Confucianism,devoted himself to reconstruct Chinese Confucianism and communicate the Chinese and western philosophy.In the 1930s,he published a series of papers about literary criticism.However,they attracted little attention in comparison to his philosophical achievements all the time.In this thesis,the author argues that the papers of Mou Zongsan are meant to be re-elucidated the Chinese classical literary implications and modernize the Chinese literature by means of western theory,in spite of without complete and systematic theory.The perspective of philosophy studying classical literature raised by Mou Zongsan,is unique and valuable for Chinese literature.Overall,his papers have considerable academic value and are worthy of further study.On account of the above,this paper chooses "The Comprehension,Creation and Appreciation","The Reasons of the Tragedy of The Dream of Red Mansions","Statements of Poems by Oneself(Stylistic Mode;Regulated Verse;Poetic Flavor)"and"Poetic Realm" as objects of study.In order to clarify the thinking thread and research core of Mou Zongsan's literary criticism thought,this paper will interpret his papers from the theory,fictional criticism and poetry criticism.In the first paper,the author explicates the nature,generation and acceptance of literature from the view of writers and readers.On the one hand,he underlines the"internal essence" and "eternal meaning" of literature;on the other hand,he also affirms the social influence on literature.Then he puts forward a social impact theory centering on the literary text,with the different from materialistic literary theory.His theory has been fully practiced in his specific textual criticism.In the second paper,the author considers the different life insight and the impermanence of life as reasons of The Dream of Red Mansions' tragedy.He extracts two tragic plots:the death of Dai Yu and Bao Yu's becoming a monk,to transform its tragic meaning by Chinese style from the conflict of character and the impermanence of destiny.Furthermore,Mou Zongsan chooses "impermanence","moksha" as the core issue to research the tragic factors hiding in Chinese culture.His study about The Dream of Red Mansions' tragedy makes the tragedy theory have a further development.In the poetry criticism,the author mainly appreciates Li Bai and Du Fu's poets."Stylistic mode" and "Poetic flavor" are deemed criteria of criticism to evaluate poems' value.He regards the poems that reveal the intelligence,human spirit,and time spirit as ideal paradigm,and focusing on social responsibility and influence for reality.On the whole,Mou Zongsan's papers reflect the integration of Chinese and Western literature theory.He draws lessons from western theoretical thought in literary concept and method of literary criticism widely.He also develops the classical literary theory intentionally with objectivity,achieving the combination between western theory and Chinese literary works and transformation of modernity of Chinese literature.Meanwhile,he emphasizes the Study of Life in Confucianism and appreciates the literature from measure of Confucian values.His purpose is finding the approach of ideological inheritance in classical Chinese literature and connecting the lifeblood of the Chinese cultural life.In a word,the unique method for literary criticism by him brings different perspective of study for the Chinese literary world in 1930s.Nevertheless,there are still many problems and limitations in Mou zongsan's criticism,such as inadequate combination between the theory and text,excessive measure of philosophy results in the ignorance of literariness and inappropriate evaluation for materialism theory and the realism literature.