In recent years, scholars of modern and contemporary Chinese literature have been vehemently calling for research perspectives on literature written in the “Republic of China”. “Republican literature” has become a prominent topic in academia and is even regarded as a new trend in literary scholarship.

Viewed from a certain standpoint, the perspective of “Republican literature” is indicative of an innate push to expand the boundaries of modern and contemporary Chinese literature as an academic discipline. This push makes the structure and the content of the discipline much more complicated, and can be viewed as a continuation and extension of the “rewriting literary history” movement in the 1990s. If this concept of literary history comes to fruition and gains acceptance, then the previous modality of modern and contemporary Chinese literature will face a monumental challenge. Regardless of what the purpose of a research perspective on “Republican literature” is, however, such a perspective will inevitably raise some confusion.

First of all, this is a political perspective on literary history—“Republican literature” is hardly a name bestowed from a literary perspective. It is well known that the foundation of the “Republic of China” initially symbolized the formation of a new “political state”. Naturally this new political state needed to foster its own new discourse on political ideology, and this new discourse would play a decisive role in building a “national image” and culture. However, research on “Republican literature” has overemphasized the influence of political culture and ideology on literature from the Republican period, which distracts scholars from delving into the true meanings of stories and novels.

Secondly, dubbing a perspective “Republican literature” or trying to build such a perspective lacks the comprehensive vision of “new Chinese literature”. The division it creates, starting only with post-May Fourth Movement literature, and imposing segments on it based merely on distinctions in political region and cultural context, not only deprive modern Chinese literature of what makes it “modern”, but also obscure the natural boundaries between the “new” and the “old” in new Chinese literature. As everyone knows, Chinese new literature was born before the May Fourth Movement; during this period some of the most representative works of new Chinese literature, both theoretical and creative, were produced. The values and the meaning expressed in these works, distinguished their very nature from that of traditional literature. Setting new Chinese literature as having emerged from and been defined by “Republican literature” is therefore a very unreliable categorization, as “Republican literature” lacks the fundamental content to explain the transformation of traditional Chinese literature into modern Chinese literature—what is new about “Republican literature” is much too nebulous for it to be an effective category, in particular because the associated transformations in language and literary forms are outdated. Unable to display the mantle of new Chinese literature’s iconic theoretical and creative achievements, “Republican literature” cannot bear an epoch-making name.

Thirdly, “Republican literature” departs from the recognized classics of modern literature and veils the significance of modern writers and their works, treating them with a certain disenchantment or lukewarm reception. Any construction or narrative of literary history evolves over the course of historians’ and audiences’ long-term exposure to writers and works, for which the aggregate impressions of being studied and screened many times over sediment into widely recognized canons of excellent writers and works. This is not just how literary history is practiced; it also constitutes the textual basis of literary history. Modern Chinese literary history’s narratives have become ever deeper, and the culmination of a process beginning with China’s earliest modern writers and scholars and spanning several generations down to the present which has enabled the historic morphology of Chinese literature came into being. Although in studying “Republican literature” scholars can explore a lot of works and writers from that period, a lot of “dross” has also seeped into that body of literary, making historical narratives of modern Chinese literature susceptible to becoming “bloated” and degrading the value and the meaning of constructing literature history.

Fourthly, studying literature from the perspective of “Republican literature” strips away or completely glosses over modern and contemporary Chinese literature and the features that give it its name—vividness, richness and a sense of dynamism. Continuously evolving and all-inclusive, modern and contemporary Chinese literature or new Chinese literature has an expansive field of view and encompasses the literature of all of China’s ethnicities. In the vastness of modernity and the contemporary period, it progresses along time’s axis, full of tension and brimming with the ever-changing textures of reality. Periodicity is especially distinct in the modality of new Chinese literature—for modern and contemporary Chinese literature, the literary direction and historical connotation of each period are readily discernible, reflecting inherent rhythms of literature’s historical evolution. However, the concept of “Republican literature” and research conducted from this perspective is not capable of grasping that vividness, richness and sense of dynamism. It can only copy and combine the forms of “left-wing”, liberalist and nationalist literature, lacking any of its own unique internal qualities.

Fifthly, although the Kuomintang held power during the “Republic of China”, the struggle between the CPC and Kuomintang for power over cultural discourse never ceased. The cultural paths, policies, strategies and measures laid out by the CPC and the Kuomintang are fundamentally different, reflected in the respective literary theory and creations of each party and further manifested in the discrepancies between the characteristic practices of “left-wing literature” and those of Yan’an literature. So, if the “instrument of the Republic” could come into existence, then how can literary scholars delve further into their study of this instrument and its counterpart the “Yan’an instrument”, as well as contemporary Chinese literature produced by and descending from the “Yan’an instrument”? Extending and deepening research from the perspective of “Republican Literature” has only multiplied and further complicated, this perspective raises. Certainly, the aim of rethinking the research perspective on “Republican Literature” is to open new avenues of thought in a broader academic vision and obtain new practical breakthroughs through concrete research without making the discipline of Chinese literature sink into excessive interpretation or blindly extend its boundaries.

The author is from Chinese Language and Literature College at Shaanxi Normal University.

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 518, Nov. 1, 2013.

　　Translated by Zhang Mengying

　　Revised by Charles Horne