The Intersection Of Western Aestheticism And Chinese Classical Literature

Aestheticism was an ideological movement in France,Britain and other European countries in the late 19 th century.In the aspect of life,it advocates to treat life in the spirit of art;In terms of artistic,it advocates "art for art’s sake";At the same time,it is also a direction of artistic criticism,which has a profound impact on modern art.Chinese’s reception of aestheticism began in the early 20 th century,and reached a peak in the 1920 s and 1930 s.Various literary groups introduced and imitated western aestheticism writers.However,a large-scale aestheticism movement didn’t appear in China like Europe or Japan.It is often considered that the social environment with so much internal crisis and external threats was not suitable for the spread of aestheticism.This paper tries to discuss the reasons from the perspective of literary tradition.Literary tradition still plays an important role in many aspects.Even though the emergence of modern Chinese literature was influenced by western thoughts,most modern Chinese writers hold a negative attitude towards traditional literature.In terms of the embracers,they grew up with traditional education,so many traditional literary ideas and languages account for a large proportion in their works.These literary traditions constituted their reception background and affected their comprehension and expression of aestheticism.Zhou Zuoren and Shao Xunmei are the representative writers of Chinese aestheticism.Zhou Zuoren’s "pure essay " was a kind of combination of aestheticism and literature of late Ming dynasty.The sensuous descriptions in Shao Xunmei’s poetries was not only an imitation of European aestheticism,but also influenced by Chinese traditional erotic literature.This is a reason why they are similar to the western aesthetic thoughts but do not belong to it.