Zhou Zuoren’s Conception On Chinese And His Practice

The Chinese education has lasted for more than one thousand years with a traditional accumulation. The modern Chinese education has experienced a century since its birth in1904. With the introduction of western thoughts, the changes of languages and the innovations in the concept of literature led the transformation from the traditional Chinese education to modern Chinese education in terms of the element of Chinese, the concept of Chinese and all related fields. A large numbers of excellent writers took active participate in the revolution of Chinese, produced considerable numbers of classic papers and set up the new expression way of Chinese. Meanwhile, they also performed the theoretical exploration and applied them to the practice o Chinese education. During this course, a quantity of Chinese masters made significant progress in the field of writing, theoretical exploration and educating, and most importantly, they also influenced the aspects of modern Chinese education through the concept of literature and the practice of literature creation. So the exploration of language mutation in the early stage of twentieth century to study its influence on the quality of national culture might give useful reference to the concept of modern Chinese education.Zhou Zuoren is one of the masters in modern Chinese literature, and is famous for his merit in the theory of literature and art, translating and writing. He experienced the development of the Chinese literature in the twentieth century and his practice in the literature creation and Chinese educating has the typical significance. Moreover, his experience also reflected the changes in the concept of Chinese education. In this work, the Chinese concept of Zhou Zuoren and his practice in literature was studied by the combination of literature and art, language and culture in the course of mutation of Chinese literature in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the dynamic studies of his concept in the development of modern Chinese education and the full comparison with other masters in terms of the function of literature, the style of article, the education of Chinese etc. might provide meaningful suggestions on the modern Chinese education. The thesis includes the following four parts: The first part is on the formation background of Zhou Zuoren’s concept in Chinese. Zhou Zuoren had the unique background in the literature. Although born in a literary family and received the traditional education in Chinese, anyway, the influence from his grandfather gave him the thorough understanding of the drawbacks of the traditional Chinese education. At the same time, the impact from his brother Lv Xun and five-years’studies in Japan further influenced him by the western thoughts, such as humanitarianism, romanticism etc. So Zhou Zuoren not only had the common characters of the intellectuals in the twentieth century, but also presented the unique aspects due to the combination of the tradition and modern. This part is focused on his attitude towards Chinese education from the point of interest and his way to study Chinese through the overview, which built solid background for his literature indicting.The second part is on the Zhou Zuoren’s concept in language. He properly dealt with relationship between classical Chinese and vernacular, written language and colloquial language, Chinese language and foreign language though his practice in theory exploration and literature creation. He proposed an ideal expression of language, i.e. elegant popular Chinese. The May4th cultural movement could be regarded as an evolution of Chinese and there were kinds of debates on the reflection of language. Zhou Zuoren clearly realized the importance of mother language that related with the nation’s survival by virtue of his solid background in Chinese and his keen understanding in literature. He persisted in the application of mother language and Chinese should be set as the common language of our nation. Moreover, he wanted to rich Chinese and set up the modern Chinese literature combination of classical Chinese, vernacular and foreign language.The third part is on Zhou Zuoren’s practice and achievement on literature. He insisted that the development of modern Chinese closely depended on the considerable amounts of excellent literature creations. In this context, he took an active participate in the progress of the modern literature, proposed that literature is a kind of way for character expression based on the emotion to character its beauty in "Ben Se". His excellent contributions in essay enriched the resource of modern literature. Meanwhile, Zhou Zuoren explored actively in the writing style of modern literature, such as the irony style in writing strengthening the expressions of literature, the description of affection in the epistolary style helping to enhance the familiarity of literature creation. More importantly, the style of "Wen Chao Gong Ti" pioneered the popularity of "Xue Zhe San Wen" due to integration of artistry and technicality. Therefore, the practices of Zhou Zuoren have the typical character of his times and his color, which is very instructive for the development of modern literature and the Chinese education.The fourth part is on the relationship between Zhou Zuoren and modern Chinese education. He tried his best to construct modern Chinese and took active part in the innovation of Chinese education. Zhou Zuoren had twenty years’experience in education, edited the textbook and propagandized his concept of Chinese, which strongly influenced his students. This was demonstrated by the literature creation and theoretical exploration of Fei Ming, Yu Pingbo and Shen Qiwu. Moreover, as the pioneer of modern Chinese literature, the classic works of Zhou Zuoren might be selected as the potential alternative in the textbook of modern Chinese.