Conservatism And Flexibility: The Study On One Phenomenon Of Wu Rulun’s Literary Activities

The amplitude and speed of ideological change in all areas is unprecedented duringlate Qing Dynasty. A variety of conflicts and sense of crisis caused of the collisionbetween Chinese and Western both force traditional society to respond. Wu Rulun is atypical model in fission era. He is not only a litterateur but also an educator. At the sametime, he has multiple personalities of conservatism and flexibility. This paper focuses itselfon internal relation between his double identities and multiple personalities in order toexplore the performance and significance in fields of ancient prose creation and literatureeducation. Thereby we can inspect the culture phenomenon why the ancient prose retreatsfrom center to edge during historical transition period.The prose has three parts. The first part selects life experience of Wu Rulun as theresearch object to explore the forming process and reasons of his multiple personalities.The second part explores the performance of his multiple personalities of conservatismand flexibility in ancient prose creation. On the one hand, I analyze Wu Rulun’s pursue toaesthetic nature of ancient prose and his safeguard to stylistic value facing the impact ofthe new style, thereby we can inspect his personality of conservatism. On the other hand,Wu Rulun permeates ancient prose writing style into practical writing. By that, thecontradiction about old in form and new in content can be eased. At the same time, byinspecting his attitude to translation, I demonstrate the fact that Wu Rulun regard ancientprose writing style as translation media is a reality strategy to cater to the upper literati.The third part talks about how his multiple personalities perform in the literary education.In this part, I demonstrate his multidimensional search from several aspects such asteaching idea and teaching textbook. By interpreting what ancient prose come across in eraof transition, I reveal the history necessity of Chinese culture moving from traditionaltowards modern.The conclusion part sublimates the theme. By using the method of sympathy afterunderstanding, we can experience his confusion in cultural change period. After all, hismultiple personalities attribute to his emotion of traditional culture and closeness ofwestern civilization. As a scholar in late Qing Dynasty, Wu Rulun is a typical character inscholar-bureaucrat group. He is the unity of universality and individuality. His multiplepersonalities affect profoundly with a unique value.