The Criticism On "Wen Yi Zai Dao" During The Period Of The Republic Of China And The Inspiration

“Wen Yi Zai Dao” is one of the most important ancient literature theories in China.But it had been criticized in the Period of the Republic of China.This thesis is aimed at combing this criticism and its reasons,in order to find correct interpretation mode to explain “Wen Yi Zai Dao” and other ancient literature theories,and to give a little strength on modern transformation of ancient literary theory and the construction of Chinese modern literary theory.In order to establish the new cultural discourse power,Chinese New Literary Concept began to re-calculate the traditional culture during the May 4th new culture movement.Therefore“Wen Yi Zai Dao” bear the brunt of fierce criticism as the core proposition of the Confucian literature.Intellectuals represented by Literary Research Society and Creation Society unanimously opposed to this idea and criticized and deconstructed this theory.After the rise of the proletarian revolutionary literature,the community still opposed to literary training means.But intellectuals started to use “Wen Yi Zai Dao” as a tool.Some of whom used to criticize it even changed their mind about is theory,such as Zhou Zuoren and GuoMuoruo.Because of the entertaining of literature was gradually strong and the influence of the environment of society,intellectuals wanted to use this theory to strengthen the historical mission,social function and power of literature.Some intellectuals began to think about “Wen Yi Zai Dao” calmly in the 1930 s.Zhou Zuoren proposed to divide the concept of Chinese literature into “Yan Zhi” and “ZaiDao”two schools.This division activated the discussion on the mainstream of Chinese ancient literary ideas.Some relevant scholars did research of academic reason of this theory.Intellectuals in the Republic of China began with criticism but ended with the new “Zai Dao”.As for the reason of criticize the theory,it might be the culture unconfidence facing the western modernization caused their too muchemphasis on the social value of literature.Also,they misunderstood the “Wen Yi Zai Dao” theory.In the other side,the intellectuals’ strong political utilitarianism made them didn’t change their mind-sets in opposing tradition.So they began to maintain this theory.Zhu Ziqing and some other intellectuals’ research methodologies on “Wen Yi Zai Dao” inspire contemporary literary theory construction.In order to understand this problem correctly,we should abandon the methodological attitude of the ancient literary theory in the view of western and modern literature.We need to go back to the generating context of this theory to get closer to the truth.