Social Sciences in China

Vol. 38, No. 2, 2017

 

SPECIAL ISSUE: INTELLECTUAL ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE LITERARY REVOLUTION: CONNOTATIONS AND BACKGROUND COLOR OF NEW CULTURE MOVEMENT

 

May Fourth Writers’ Reconstruction of Traditional Chinese Literary Classics

(Abstract)

 

He Zhongming

 

The classics are at the heart of traditional literature, and play an important role in its transmission. May Fourth writers did not totally reject traditional literary classics; rather, they selectively preserved and reinterpreted them, setting up a new canon based on the criteria of evolution, humanism, human relationships, popular culture, etc. To a certain extent, the May Fourth reconstruction of the classics inherited late Qing thought and views of literature, but it was more of an embodiment of new intellectual horizons; a modern spirit acting through the rediscovery and recreation of traditional literature. The reconstruction of the classical canon revealed a close connection between the New Literature and traditional literature, thereby effectively facilitating the acceptance of New Literature by the masses. It also provided writers with national resources for literary creation, thus preventing New Literature from descending to nihilistic understanding of Chinese tradition. This mode of discovering and creating the modern while being rooted in their native soil enabled such writers to step out of the binary opposition between “making China Western” and “Sinicizing the West,” and thus has methodological significance for the relation between Chinese and Western cultures from the late Qing on. Literary classics have a profound meaning for writers’ creations and for literature and cultural tradition. Despite its shortcomings, the May Fourth reconstruction of the traditional classics can inspire us even today.

 

Key words: May Fourth writers, traditional literature, canon, reconstruction