ZhouZuoRen's Philosophy Of Life And Its Influences On His Literary Idea And His Writing

ZhouZuoRen is the great literary man and thinker in Chinese literature circles of the 20 century and his literary works and thoughts generally melt together. Therefore, his works not only have the high quality of art, but also are radiant for the deep thoughts in them. ZhouZuoRen' s thoughts had formed a broad and profound system and this system had great affects on his literary idea , the style of writing, the subject matter of writing, the contents of writing and so on. So this thesis starts with the philosophy of life which is the spirit of his thoughts. At first I study the contents and characteristics of his philosophy of life, and then try to find out what influences his philosophy of life have on his literary idea and writing.This thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part I elaborate on the contents of ZhouZuoRen' s philosophy of life from six aspects. They are "know about yourself", "theory of human nature" , "point of view of life and death" , "nihilism of life" , "solitary of life" and "art of life" . In the second part I evaluate the special features of his philosophy of life from two sides. One is abstraction and it means that his theory of human nature transcends the history and the development of human society longitudinally and surpasses the limit of country and race horizontally. The other is doctrine of the mean. During the discussion I also probe into the different kinds of origins of his thoughts and the hard process in which his thoughts came into being. In the third part I discuss how Zhou' s philosophy of life influenced his literary idea and writing. The influences on his literary idea are mainly that his views of life, for example, "reason and human feelings" ,"theory of human nature" and "common humanity" were carried out in. Besides these, "sincerity of literature" and the "four point of views about literary art" are the others. Among them"sincerity of literature" is explained from four phases, "view of expressing yourself", "against utilitarianism", "individual literature" and "true qualities" and the " four point of view about literary art" is expounded with "taste" , "commonplace and nature" , "simplicity" and"bitterness and acerbity" . The influences on his writing are dealt with in three fields. They are the style, the subject of matter and the genre of writing. About the style I study the close intrinsic relationship between his preferring to prose and his philosophy of life and how the changes of his prose style show the ones of his thoughts. Concerning the subject matter of writing I discuss how Zhou' s loving life and "common humanity" influenced it. For example, he like to write the fate of unimportant person, the local snacks, the folk arts, the slight changes in nature and so on. As regard to the genre of writing, I set forth that the contradiction of his philosophy of life make his works present the contradictious style which not only is peaceful but also shows his teeth. Through this thesis I intend to extract his thoughts about "human" and "life" from Zhou' s works, diary and letters and put them in good order, on the basis of which I generalize the characteristics of his philosophy of life. Another more important aim is studying how Zhou' s philosophy of life influenced every side of his literary idea and writing and to what extent his success in literature is attributed to his thoughts.What I should point out specially is that ZhouZuoRen is actually very complicated. His thoughts are not only intricate and at variance, but also inconsistent and capricious. In this thesis his thoughts are divided into several parts so distinctly and clearly that the readers can understand and accept them easily. But thus the complication of Zhou is weaken. It is very difficult to satisfy both parties.WuXia (Chinese Modern Literature) Directed by Xu PengXu...