Between The Japanese Naturalism Literature And The Chinese May 4^th New Literature

In the period of the May 4th Movement and at the timely atmosphere of whole opening, various trends of thoughts of foreign literature and art poured into China and made a big influence on the literature of the period of the May 4th Movement. The theory and works of the naturalistic literature, together with other literature schools, enriched the literary circles of the period of the May 4th Movement and caused the pluralism and complexity of the main trend of the period of the May 4th Movement, enlightenment. The Japanese Naturalism has a lot of differences with the French Naturalism, though the former was founded with the latter's influence. As the Japanese literature has a special origin with Chinese modern literature, compared with the French Naturalism, the Japanese Naturalism has more influence on Chinese literature of the period of the May 4th Movement. Nowadays, the comparative research of Chinese and Japanese literature has great achievements. However, the influence, which the Japanese Naturalism has made onto the Chinese New Literature, has not been yet valued.Therefore, this thesis will develop discussion with the title"Between the Japanese Naturalism Literature and the Chinese May 4th New Literature". The body can be divided into four chapters.Chapter One: The Nativistic Literature of the Japanese Naturalism. The Japanese Naturalism took place under the influence of the western, especially Zolaism. However, it rooted in the earth of the native literature and culture of Japan. The inner relations and meanings of aesthetic appreciation took varieties with the change of the loads. In the process of transplanting and assimilating of the French Naturalistic Literature, it succeeded in creatively transferring of the nativism. And this phenomenon wasn't occasional. The author examined it mainly from these two angles of society and literature. In Japan, the process of the introduction to the formation of the Naturalism war carried out in the social background of the period of Meiji. The incompleteness of Japan's Meiji Restoration determined the speciality and complexity of the process of Japanese modernization. On one side, the thoughts of individualism and liberalism, such as freedom, democracy, science, human rights, etc, spread quickly in Japan. On the other side, the Japanese brought in nationalism form Germany in order to be stronger and more creative, and the Naturalism became the spiritual core of the period of Meiji. The struggle between the rights of people and the rights of nation not only appeared in the field of Japanese politics, but also affected the intellectuals to take part in it. In this process of struggle, as the expression of the intellectuals'inside feelings, the Japanese Naturalistic Literature formed. As every different nation has its own basic personality and special aesthetic interests, the culture of Yamato embodied a kind of culture of"love". In literature, it is realized by"subjectivr feelings".This kind of literature not only affected the Japanese literary understanding of"truth", but also determined the main content of what Japanese literature described. The Japanese Naturalistic Literature inherited the tradition of Japanese"subjective feelings"and then formed the unique Japanese literary pattern,"private fictions".Chapter Two: The Chinese Naturalistic Literature, that is the borrowing of the New Literature of the period of the May 4th Movement. Naturalism was brought into China in the early 20th century, and Japan was the main theoretical cradle for Chinese literary world to study Naturalism. The Naturalism that《The Monthly Newspaper of Novels》perceptively reflected the Japanese Naturalism or the Japanese literary circle. The particularity of Chinese literature refined the Naturalism and made it become the expressing load of enlightening literature outlook. In some way, the initiators of the May 4th New Literature advocated Naturalism and tried to overcome the weak points of the unreal description of realism and then reformed some principles to become the organic part of the theory of reality. Therefore, in China, the trend of Naturalistic thought didn't form as in Japan. The initiators of the New Literature just accepted the two describing methods of the Naturalism, that is,"objective description". But they refused some natural factors of the Naturalism. As a result, what Chinese initiators promoted was neither French nor the Japanese Naturalism. They just absorbed some specific content of the theory of the Naturalism. In this chapter, the author base on the literary background of Chinese May 4th Movement, circled the core of literature modernization, discussed the literary world of Chinese May 4th Movement, the characteristics and starting points and the selectively accepting process of the Naturalism.Chapter Three: Lu Xun's Novels and the Japanese Naturalism. It was the time that the Naturalism took up the whole Japanese literary world when Lu Xun was studying abroad. Therefore, the relationship between the Japanese Naturalism and his novels is still a controversial and mainly focused issue in the research of Chinese modern literature. The writer examined Lu Xun's novels by facts and discovered that they had similar characteristics of Naturalistic Literature:"the description of nearby people and events","the exactness and scientific qualities of narration"and"weakening of plots'factors."When he was studying abroad in Japan, Lu Xun experienced the Naturalistic Literature toughly. Although he disagreed with the theory and creation of it, his works and theory inevitably scampered through it. Therefore, it was not strange that his works were influenced a bit by the Naturalistic Literature. The writer had the same agreement that Lu Xun's novels had the different nature with the Japanese Naturalistic Literature, with most researchers. However, the writer thought that couldn't be the reasons for the potential influence by the producing methods of Japanese Naturalistic Literature.Chapter Four: the Earlier Stage of the Creator's Society and the Japanese Naturalism. This chapter mainly talks about the relationship between the Earlier Stage of the Creator's Society which is the important consortium of the period of Chinese May 4th Movement and the Japanese Naturalistic Literature. On one side, as the characteristics what the literature of the Earlier Stage of the Creator's Society showed were quite different from the realism that the Literature Research Union advocated, so this literature were called romanticism in China. Furthermore, some members of the literature of the Earlier Stage of the Creator's Society expressed disagreements with the Naturalism Literature in public. On the other side, their creation had the same characteristics with Japanese"private fictions", in"autobiographic narration""the development of self expression"and"undisguised description". In order to explain this phenomenon, the writer discussed it from two aspects. First, analyze the characteristics of the Japanese Naturalism in details. Second, from the concept of literature of the community, analyze the reasons why the members of the community held negative attitude toward the Naturalism. Though careful investigation, the writer found out that in fact, the Japanese Naturalism had romantic personalities and the members of the community inherited the concept of the Japanese Naturalistic Literature,"the subjective insertion—explanative—impression."The above is the solution of the first aspect. As for the second aspect, from the different Chinese and Japanese literary traditions"and"the love knots of Nationalism of the previous creating community", the writer explained the reason why on one side they inherited the developing pattern of self experience and self expression of the Japanese Naturalistic Literature, but on the other side, they went against its non-social characteristics. As for the third part, from the contemporaneity of the Taisho literature and the New Literature of the period of the May 4th Movement, the writer pointed to the community adopted the literary pattern of self fiction was because of the similar background, but not the occasional factor of studying abroad in Japan. In the last part, the writer does research on one of the members of the community, Ziping Zhang, who had the strongest color of the Naturalism.When analyzing, the thesis tried to combine the points and faces: pay attention to the recalling and discovering of literary and social environment, the formation and the evolvement of the insides of both the Japanese Naturalistic Literature and literature of the period of the May 4th Movement, and the combination of some specific literary problems what the Japanese Naturalistic Literature brought to the Chinese new literary circle in the modern literary transformation of concept, content, pattern, etc.