| This thesis examines the institutionalization and practice of literary historiography in Republican China through the writings of Zheng Zhenduo (1898-1956). On the basis of a careful reading of Zheng's three book-length histories of Chinese and world literature, written from the early 1920s to late 1930s, the thesis questions the characterization of Republican literary historical scholarship as simply iconoclastic (vis-a-vis Chinese tradition) or derivative (vis-a-vis the West). It shows that Zheng's literary historiography was actually comprised of multiple and sometimes contradictory approaches to the past. These approaches were shaped, on the one hand, by the demands of a professional discipline that was constructed on the ideal of a universal literature but also faced with the task of integrating the Chinese people into history; and, on the other, by a confrontation and creative negotiation with earlier readings and valuations of Chinese literature. |
