Research On Wang Tao’s Press Prose

The press prose in this research specifically refers to the kind of transitional literary form between ancient traditional prose and modern writing in the vernacular during the period of the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China.The press prose takes the newspaper and periodicals as the media to spread and popularize thoughts and cultures to the mass.Wang Tao is one of the primary pioneers of this kind of literary form.Throughout his life,he has written and published a great number of influential press proses,which profoundly aroused the boom of writing press proses at that time and led such literary form from emergence to maturity.However,for a long time,academic research on press proses of Wang Tao has just concentrated on his articles of political comments in Literary Compilation of Taoyuan,but a great number of articles published in Universal Circulating Herald,Shun Pao and Church News have rarely been focused.This paper takes the press proses of Wang Tao as the research object,and bases on Literary Compilation of Taoyuan to comprehensively classify his sporadic and various kinds of articles in modern newspapers,to review the his press proses in multi dimensions,and eventually evaluates and orientates his articles in a scientific and rational way.The article consists of three parts,including introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction introduces the background,research status and significance of the topic.First of all,from the beginning,advancement,in-depth,prosperous and other four stages,the study of Wang Tao’s press prose in the centenary of the academic world has been reviewed on a diachronic level.Secondly,it sorts out the main aspects of Wang Tao’s press prose research from four aspects: text literature,content thought,literature and conclusion.Through combing,the author believes that although the research on Wang Tao’s press prose has achieved many achievements in the past 100 years,the current research on Wang Tao’s press prose has yet to be further explored and explored in six aspects: literature,ideological content,stylistic features mining,and research material development and integration.This paper is composed of the introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction is mainly about the background of the topic,the current conditions of the research and the significance.It demonstrates that over the past centuries,the press proses of Wang Tao have undergone four progressive stages including the emerging,developing,deepening and blooming.Besides,it has also got fruitful achievement in the aspects of document arrangement,thoughts exploration,literary discussion and value assessment.However,because of the limitation of documents,the research on press proses written by Wang Tao stills needs further expansion and elaboration.The main body is mainly divided into five chapters:The first chapter analyzes and clarifies the macro factors,conception,and developing process of press proses.It advocates that the declination of traditional essays and the rise of modern newspaper and periodicals are two major factors of the emergence of press proses.Besides,it was Wang Tao that authentically made the press proses mature.Hence,he played a significant role in the development of press proses.The second chapter clarifies press activities Wang Tao participated before the funding of Universal Circulating Herald,and the basic conditions of Universal Circulating Herald.It concludes that his attitude transformation from refusing to accepting in the face of the modern newspaper and periodicals acts as the crucial factor that influences his initiative and consciousness to write press proses.Besides,it also classifies the naming and composing of Universal Circulating Herald,which lays the foundation for further research on press proses of Wang Tao in Universal Circulating Herald.The third chapter applies the methods of comparative analysis and the mutual reflection of literature and history to research and explore the press proses of Wang Tao in newspapers,periodicals and relevant anthology like Universal Circulating Herald,Comment Anthology of Tiannandunsou,Shun Pao and Church News,and to research the press proses that were not collected in Literary Compilation of Taoyuan.It demonstrates that Literary Compilation of Taoyuan was not Wang Tao’s exclusive collection,as only few articles were from Universal Circulating Herald.Besides,Comment Anthology of Tiannandunsou is not his exclusive collections,either,as only few articles were written by him.What’s more,it also defines the starting and ending periods when he published the articles in Church News.The fourth chapter analyzes the main thoughts in his seven types of press proses covering the politics,economics,diplomacy,legislation,military,social customs,and other essays.It discovers that the perspective and attention of Wang Tao were mainly concentrated on the politics and military,and then was the social customs,economics,diplomacy,legislation and other essays.The fifth chapter analyzes the artistic and value characteristics of his press proses.It enumerates several artistic characteristics in his press proses including conventional artistic forms in new use,fixed literary patterns,free writing styles,and flexible writing techniques.The press proses of Wang Tao contain valuable historical information,and his thoughts have practical and instructive significance in today’s world.We can comprehend the literature work of Wang Tao in a more scientific way through the exploration of the literariness of his newspaper works.The conclusion concludes the paper in full.The press proses emerged in the background when the traditional essays were fading,and the modern newspaper and periodicals were rising.Wang Tao made such literary form gradually get mature.Wang Tao engaged in the press industry when he was young,but most of his massive articles were written after his middle ages.According to the analysis,the author researches over 600 press proses of Wang Tao in newspapers and relevant anthology like Universal Circulating Herald and Shun Pao and Comment Anthology of Tiannandunsou,and classifies the articles in seven types including the politics and economics.Wang Tao has the important position in the history of Chinese prose owing to the unique artistic forms of his press proses,and his thoughts have left the profound and positive influence on Chinese modern literature,thoughts,and politics.