A Study Of Hu Shih's Evidential Investigation On Chinese Novel

This study is deployed around Hu Shih's evidential investigation on Chinese novel. It examines its social and academic context, Hu's personal factors, inspects the reason why he chose to do it. What's more, it brings forward an analyze of his understanding on novel, and indicates his individual contributions to modern literary theory of novel.Hu Shih's perspective of novel was based on his opinion of Chinese ancient novels in classical language and latter-day novels in living language, as well as western fictions. He has put forward some key issues on Chinese novels, that is, to promote and re-evaluate it. He also advocated learning from western fiction on the type, structure, and descriptions and so on.Two of Hu Shih'most important articles on Chinese novel are his research on Shuihu Chuan (Outlaws of The Marsh) and A Dream of Red Mansions (The Story of the Stone). The former one discovered a way of"historical evolvement", and the latter one emphasized on author study. These two factors correspond with two different ways in which those novels were produced, which has never been noticed before.Hu Shih's study on novel was an important mark for novel to become a modern academic research field, which is his individual contribution, and also the inevitable consequence of the novel improvement beginning in late Qing dynasty and later the New Culture Movement and May 4th Movement. Besides, Hu's evidential investigation on Chinese novel shared the same social and academic background with the movement to re-read orthodox documents with scientific methods.To Hu Shih himself, his research on novel helped a lot in illustrating and propagating his scientific methods. On the other hand, it also provided a way in which he could calm down to his own spirit.In conclusion, Hu Shih's evidential investigation on Chinese novel played an important role in enlightenment of our modern perspective of novel. By virtue of his research, we finally realize that novels are part of our literature heritage, as well as poems in Tang dynasty, lyrics in Song dynasty and so on. However,the achievement of Hu's research on novel should owe more to scientific methods and the language revolution, than to literary criticism. Therefore, referring to the difference between modern and ancient research on novel, we should also be aware that Hu's evidential investigation is just part of, but far from terminal of enlightenment.