A Study On The Aesthetic Changes Of Modern Chinese Book Forms(1840-1919)

This paper focuses on the material form of books and the aesthetic experience conveyed by sensible media.With the help of the interaction between books and social culture,this paper attempts to write a miniature cultural history of objects for the form of modern Chinese books.This paper attempts to answer several core questions are: from the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement,what changes have taken place in the material form of Chinese books ? What are the reasons for the combination of agricultural civilization printing and industrial civilization publishing?What is the historical motivation for the modern generation of the aesthetic characteristics of Chinese books,and what kind of cultural influence does it have in Chinese society?The printing mechanism of ancient Chinese books has its own tradition.From books made of hard materials to books made of soft materials,Chinese book making technology has been continuously improving and developing.Whether it is scrolling bound books,warp bound books from ancient and medieval times,or thread bound books that have become more popular since medieval times,they all embody the Chinese classical humanistic spirit of respecting heaven,earth,and orderly human relations.The aesthetic tradition of the ancient book form continued to be inherited in the Qing Dynasty,and through the legislation of the Qing royal family,a system of Confucian cultural grade projection was formed,which also constituted the prehistory of the modern book revolution.Since the 16 th and 17 th centuries,western religious and scientific books have been imported into China,and the Chinese people have been exposed to Western books that are different from the traditional Chinese volumes for the first time.From the Opium War to the 1898 Reform,with the intensification of foreign aggression,Chinese intellectuals began to look at the world,and more Western and Japanese books entered the view of the Chinese people in the form of original or translated books.The unique form of foreign books has had an impact on China’s book making tradition,and the technology and culture that flowed with books have also had an impact on Chinese society.The new Japanese books with the compatibility of Eastern and Western colors have become an important hub for the spread of Western learning to the East,promoting the transformation of Chinese local book craftsmanship and aesthetic forms.The more important impetus for innovation comes from Chinese society.The rise of modern publishing industry,the spread of new educational concepts,and the progress of printing industry and book materials have jointly affected the reconstruction and renewal of modern Chinese book forms,and triggered the new book revolution.The innovation of modern Chinese book form is reflected in three aspects.From the perspective of packaging and materials,influenced by the introduction of Western style paper,the printing and packaging methods and manufacturing materials of Chinese books have undergone innovation.While the format of the paperback has changed,the traditional thread binding mode has gradually been replaced by the industrialized Western paperback and hardcover forms.The application of modern printing technology,such as letterpress printing,intaglio printing and lithographic printing,makes Chinese books have a distinctive expression of industrial media.From the perspective of page design,the new state of modern books is manifested as a cover page with a sense of design,a rich form of advertising page,a beautiful and vivid illustration page,and a copyright marker page that shows modern copyright awareness.From the perspective of font and punctuation arrangement,there are new book fonts such as Ju Zhen Fang Song and Hei Ti that absorb the aesthetic characteristics of Western books.All kinds of books generally show the integration of local books and translated books,professional books and public books have different aesthetic tastes.The modern transformation of book form has brought readers new sensory experiences such as visual and tactile senses.The change of the form of books with aesthetic functions,from form to content,has gradually influenced and influenced the reading habits of modern readers,and even the interest and cultural atmosphere of the whole society.The transformation of the aesthetic form of modern Chinese books has produced many cultural influences.After sorting out and counting 4056 representative Chinese books published between 1840 and 1919,it was found that these books were in line with the trend of modern knowledge division,and the aesthetic forms of each branch of study books had initially formed a typological expression style.As the representative of modern new knowledge books,literature and art books,science and education books,political and legal books took the lead in realizing the stylized book form matching the knowledge type.The modernization of book form directly affected the reading and aesthetic habits of modern Chinese intellectual groups.The publishing groups and reader groups most related to books interacted with each other in the process of book form change,and accepted the enlightenment of new ideas and new literature and art to varying degrees in this process.The forming modern knowledge was widely disseminated through the form of modern new books.Although its dissemination scope was limited to the group of intellectuals,especially in the cities,this new knowledge revolution caused by books created an atmosphere for the ensuing new culture movement and provided knowledge and ideological impetus for the social change in China in the first half of the 20 th century.