July To Send Ideas, With China's Modern Revolutionary Literature

The Chinese modern revolutionary literary trend of thought embodied the potential requirements of the social development of China in the form of literature, and its voluntary undertaking of the newly-born historical content brought itself new qualities in terms of aesthetics, that is, full of the masculine trait and the enthusiastic care for the life of the lower, thus creating a new literary form. However, the consequent close connection with the revolutionary practice led to its utterly opposing fates during different historical periods. The republic literary history after the foundation of new China set it as the only legal one and thereafter excluded the literary production of others patterns. As a rectification to this narration of literary history, the revolutionary literature was included in the list of liquidation in the 1980s and 1990s, and it became an "academic fashion" to deny the revolutionary literature, the cultural traditions of which that deserved inheritance was overlooked.The paper holds that neither overall negation nor overall affirmation was the standpoint of academic principles, and they did not break away from the thinking pattern of dual antinomy, but moved from one extreme to the other. Based on this acknowledgement, the paper tends to take the angle of the July School, the heterodoxy which kept a both close and distant relationship with the revolutionary literature, setting it against the whole frame of the 20th century literary history, respecting its historical choice in the particular period and its consequent special value, and trying to sort out its gains and losses by following academic principles. Therefore, the paper is not a specific exploration on the July School, but an attempt to probe the significance and values of the Chinese revolutionary literature through the both close and distant relationship between the July School and the revolutionary literature, and the rejection of the latter to the former. At the same time, efforts will be made to reveal the contributions of this abundant and sophisticated writing group in the literary history. Their theory and works functioned as a restriction on the revolutionary literature's limitations of overemphasizing the political role of literature and overlooking the aesthetic features of literature itself. The July School added to the implied meaning of the revolutionary literature while conflicting with it.The paper consists of four chapters.Since the paper is to explore the July School and the Chinese modern revolutionary literary trend of thought, it is necessary to go through the latter, which is the purpose of Chapter One. May Fourth literary revolution already contained the spread of Marxism, but it did not take up the main trend. Due to the need of saving the nation fromextinction, the individual emancipation advocated by May Fourth Movement already contained the aim of collectivism, which paved the way for the later change to Marxism. During the transformation from the literary revolution to the revolutionary literature, however, the attitudes of the latter to the former undertook quite a few changes, indicating it was not so easy as they imagined for the revolutionary literature to become completely new. Exactly in this process, the revolutionary literature experienced the two phases of Leftist Literature and Yan'an Literature, the literary features of which were both connected and different, and finally the completely new qualities of the revolutionary literature were realized through the counteraction of the latter toward the former. By then, the literary revolution essentially finished the transformation to the revolutionary literature.Chapter Two offers a general introduction to the July School, which does not deal with its specific artistic creation and stylistic features, but attempts to make clear its definition so as to remove the political factors covering it. In the process of its formation, the July School's coordination with the practical needs of the Anti-Japan War was its instinct reaction as part of the revolutionary literature, while Hu Feng's personal factors made this trend different from others. During its development, the fact that the July School was close to but at the same time kept a distance from the revolutionary literature could already be seen. Hu Feng refused to make their journal become "the organizer of literary activities for the Anti-Japan War" and "the magazine guiding establishments", but focused on the construction of new literature, thus keeping to some degree the independence of literature itself. Nevertheless, the debates in the development of the revolutionary literature sparked the July School's conscious sense of trends and this could be seen in the change from the unconsciousness of the July Periodical to the consciousness of the Hope Periodical.The July School was one of the few trends in the Chinese modern literary history that succeeded both in theory and creation, and it contributed to the Chinese modern revolutionary literature in the above two aspects. Thus, respectively from the two aspects of theory and creation, Chapter Three and Chapter Four tend to explore the relationship between the July School and the revolutionary literature, and the contributions of the former to the latter, which is the focus of the paper. As a branch of the world's Marxist literary theory, the Chinese Marxist literary theory formed two propositions in the process of development: the relationship between literature and politics, and the issue of realism. It was just on these two propositions that, on one hand, the July School was in accordance with the main theoretical system of the revolutionary literature, and on the other hand, it also went against the main system, and formed its specialties in this confrontation, thus contributing to the development of the Chinese Marxist literary theory. The July School put forth numerous propositions such as "thewounds of spiritual slavery" and "the subjective fighting spirit", which on one hand embodied the succession and development of such propositions as "the reform of national character" and "personal liberation" advocated in the tradition of revolutionary enlightenment of the May Fourth literature, and on the other hand recovered the Marxist theory of individual development. The theory of individual development specifically investigated the individual by setting him in the social situation of a certain period, holding that the individual was the ideal and fruit of the human historical inclination, and that the individual was not the beginning point of theory but the requirement and end-result of history. The neglecting of the individual was the fatal limitation of the revolutionary literature as the mainstream, and it was just due to this point that the theory of the July School revealed its enormous innovation.The July School writers followed the same literary thinking and aesthetic notions, and to be specific, their poems indicated more similarities with the revolutionary literature while their novels embodied more heterogeneity, which led to the fact that the July School as a novel trend was not acknowledged by literary history for quite a long time. Although the July School had the similar styles, individual writers had their own personal cognition, and thus formed their special writing features. In the individual creation, Lu Ling particularly achieved the transcendence over both the mainstream of the revolutionary literature and the theory of the July School itself. The interaction of Lu Ling's novels and Hu Feng's theory was well known, but compared with Hu Feng's revolutionary optimism, Lu Ling showed more a sense of tragedy. In Lu Ling's novels, this tragic sense exceeded the practical requirements of saving the nation and enlightenment imposed on literature, and it had little to do with the sense of social classes and the intention of enlightening, but was a natural and metaphysical inquiry toward life.The last part deals with the value and significance of the July School in the 20th century literary history, and with the gains and losses of the revolutionary literature reflected. The July School formed a connecting link between the preceding and the following, passing on the literary traditions of May Fourth to the literature of the 1940s. Besides, it had a penetrating influence on the issues such as "human literature" and "subjectivity" in new times. As an indispensable composition of the Chinese revolutionary literature, the July School also revealed its heterogeneity, and its stance of both meeting the needs of the times and trying to keep individuality, together with its tragic fate as a trend due to counteraction, could bring illumination and reflection to the development of the Chinese literature of the 20th century.