Short stories by Bao Tianxiao and Zhou Shoujuan during the early years of the Republic

This thesis examines the structural, narratological, and stylistic innovations Bao Tianxiao (1876--1973) and Zhou Shoujuan (1895--1968) introduced in their short stories during the early years of the Republic. It begins with an outline of the attack by the May Fourth Reformers on the two writers and their colleagues, whom they derisively labeled as the "Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School," followed by the formation of an ideologically oriented canon of modern Chinese literature, from which their works were excluded. The thesis then surveys the literary milieu of the 1910s in Shanghai during a period of rapid development and social change with its accompanying tensions, which are reflected in some of Bao's and Zhou's stories. It describes their leading role as translators and editors of literary magazines, besides writers of fiction of their own. The rest of their careers is covered briefly.; In its further exploration, the thesis discusses in detail several Western narrative methods which Bao and Zhou introduced in their short stories, some of them new in China, thereby changing the very nature of traditional storytelling as well as characterization and aspects of structure. The last chapter investigates the controversial but basic subject of how Bao and Zhou in their stories strikingly modified the traditional norms of both the classical language and the vernacular: the classical language so that it would fit the modern content and their contemporary readership; the vernacular for the sake of raising its aesthetic quality.; At the instigation of the May Fourth Movement, the Chinese Republican government passed in 1920 the act which replaced the classical language by the vernacular as the standard language. A major reason for this change was the need to make education universal in China. This development, however, was accompanied by the total rejection of the classical language as out of date. The thesis includes a short section on the Xue Heng scholars who during the 1920s presented, though in vain, well-reasoned arguments that the classical language needs to be preserved as a medium of thought and of beautiful expression. Bao's and Zhou's own experiments in language reform deserve to be remembered.