As one of the advocates for the "May Fourth" New Culture Movement, Zheng Zhenduo has not only translated and introduced foreign literature into China, but also reassessed the value of traditional Chinese literary works in the framework of world literature. Driven by this strong awareness, his interpretations of epics always appear with unique insights and analysis, more than sheer introductions.

　　I

What is epic? What is the nature of epic? What kind of genre is it? Zheng Zhenduo attempted to answer these questions on his own. In 1923, in Classification of Poetry, Zheng put epic within the generic category of western literature, clarified the characteristics of it and depicted the time sequence of three literary genres---lyrical, epic and dramatic poetry. He believed that epic came into being first; dramatic followed, and lyrical poetry was last. This is an evolution order obviously derived from his adoption of Evolution Theory, the mainstream intellectual discourse in his time. It looked different from Hegel's concept of classical poetics on the surface, but essentially remained the same, since both were recognized as stiff, a common feature shared by all kinds of linear evolving theory. In the late nineteenth century, many western scholars questioned the western classical poetics on its classification, formulaic system and sequence of poetry. The most notable was Alexander Nikolayevich Veselovsky (1838-1906), a Russian scholar in comparative literary studies. Based on the rediscovery of oral poetry by folklorists, Veselovsky challenged the concept of standardized poetics, which was deduced from western classical literature since Aristotle. He became aware that the development of epic and lyrical poetry, even dramatic poetry, would not mirror the evolution formula, but often showed itself in a mingled presence, and sometimes the appearance of lyric would be earlier than epic. Therefore, he argued for focusing on the language style, origin and evolution laws of these three genres. Though Zheng insisted that lyrical poetry was younger than epic and dramatic poetry, he also noticed that the origin and prototype of some lyrical poems didn’t come later, and realized the importance of lyrical elements in epic and dramatic poetry. In his eyes, the genre of epic included not only ancient epics but also modern ones, and the latter normally showed personal stories and emotions, especially the epics shorter in length.

In his article Epic, Zheng regarded epic as the most important subclass of narrative poetry, together with others like hero legend, adventure, fable, tanka (short poems), pastoral, and ballad. He agreed that national epic was the product of long-term development and evolution, meanwhile, advocated understanding the formation and importance of the epic genre from an ontological position. The Chinese epics of ethnic minorities, though rich and plentiful, were not fully explored at that time, so Zheng had to find examples from western epics such as the ancient Greek and Roman epics, and the Indian epics in the East, and stated his own interpretations on the basis of epic theory put forward by western scholars. In Classification of Poetry, he criticized Butcher’s definition of epic, and pinpointed the tendency of western scholars to over-emphasize ancient epics and neglect the modern ones in their definition. However, the following definition delivered by C. M. Gayley is recognized as rational and scientific in his Epic, that is “whether ancient or modern, epic is generally a non-passionate recitation, narrated in noble verse, aimed to depict an important event or activity often about heroes and supernatural facts in control of absolute determinism.” He believed this definition conveyed the full meaning of epic by taking ancient and modern epics together into consideration. According to Zheng, epic genre is composed of two major categories, national epics and personal epics. National epics are "great verse stories handed down from ancient times in different nations, mainly about one or several wars between peoples; otherwise the adventures or various magnificent achievements of a hero,", and personal epics are "modern stories created by a writer in verse."

Moreover, Zheng comprehensively sums up the features of national epics through referring to western and Indian epic poems as paradigm cases. First, the “authors are unnamed and obscure as it may be recognized as 'impersonal.’” Apparently, he is inclined to believe national epic is a collective creation taking years to complete. Second, national epics "narrate facts in relating to one nation or several, or other war-related events." Third, the content "is largely supernatural, often haunted by Gods and demons, sometimes occupied by animals, plants and other livings in nature.” Read carefully, the above characteristics indeed belong to national epics, but to be more exact, closer to heroic epics, since the study subjects Zheng took were mainly heroic poems. Then how does the great genre of epic disappear? He believes the absence of national epic is due to the disappearance of the minstrel recitals and the birth of the new genre like "legend" and "fairy tale" while the decline of personal epics is caused by the flourishing of another new genre, fiction.

　　II

The "epic problem" in Chinese literature is also a concern of Zheng, but his interpretation to this is complex and full of contradictions. First of all, he classified The Peacocks Fly to the Southeast, A Song of Unending Sorrow, The Old Charcoal Seller and other narrative poems as “epics” in Classification of Poetry, and named them "Short Epics" (Epyllion). He first espoused the existence of epics in China, perhaps on the grounds of strengthening the self-esteem of Chinese literature and improving its status in the world, or to inherit Hu Shi’s idea of metrical tale. However, Zheng soon disowned this statement in his subsequent work Epic. Although The Peacocks Fly to the Southeast is regarded as the first long poem in the history of Chinese literature, the total words are still less than eighteen hundred, while the narrative poems produced by Bai Juyi, Du Fu and other poets are even shorter. Therefore, Zheng later pointed out that if strictly defined, neither national epics nor personal epics did exist in Chinese texts. “All of them are sporadic narrative poems.” Secondly, Zheng elaborated the “epic problem” appearing in Shi Jing (The Book of Songs). He considered Gong Liu (Duke Liu) as a metrical tale dedicated to the ancestor of the Zhou nation, Gong Liu, and presumed that Dang (An Unjust Lord) might be an episode of a certain story poem written by an epic poet in praise of King Wen of Zhou. In the same chapter though, Zheng defined Wen Wang (Heaven’s Decree), Da Ming (Three Kings of Zhou), Mian (The Migration in 1325 B.C.), Si Qi (King Wen’s Reign), Huang Yi (Rise of the House of Zhou), Ling Tai (The Wondrous Park), Sheng Min (Hou Ji, the Lord of Millet Grains) and Gong Liu as narrative poems and regarded them “songs or hymns of praise by court poets of different times, to recount merits of late emperors, or to extol great achievements of temporary meritorious ministers for reminding the future generations, or even merely for the fete ceremony at temple festivals.” Obviously, Zheng disagreed with the view put forward by Lu Kanru and Feng Wanjun’s in 1925 that Sheng Min and other four poems were “epics in the Zhou nation.”

Now let’s ask: Why was there no epic on Chinese soil? Zheng explained this in two aspects: first, the lack of great poets such as Homer, who had genius in integrating the linkages between poems. Secondly, Chinese master scholars like Confucius, Mo Di and others only committed themselves to diagnosing political, social and moral malpractice at that time rather than saving literary materials among the people. As a result, a great deal of ancient folklore was neglected and disappeared with the times. In fact, these two reasons have already been, more or less, mentioned by many scholars, for instance Wang Guowei has once addressed the first reason, but found few supporters; while the second reason was a general recognition in Chinese academia, with Mao Dun being the main representative. Later in Chapter 13 “Chinese Poet in Medieval Age” in Outline of Literature, Zheng referred to the above “epic absence” again, and claimed that the metrical pattern of ancient Chinese “verses” demanded too much on regularity and strictness, thus tied the hands of Chinese poets to create full-length great masterpieces like Vergil’s Aeneid, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This idea was later echoed in On the Destiny of Rebirth (On Zai Sheng Yuan) by Chen Yinke when he also considered the elaborately coordinated parallelism and rhyme scheme as a limit for the birth of long masterwork in China.

　　III

The expounding of epic in the context of world literature inevitably needs a vision of comparative study. In Outline of Literature, Zheng described and evaluated the worldwide epic genre by taking Homeric poetry as an example, and assessed the value of Chinese literary works in the reference of Homeric and Indian epics. He did not make specific but parallel comparisons with Shi Jing (The Book of Songs), the Old and New Testament and Homeric epic, and clarified the status of Shi Jing in the history of Chinese literature. The same vision was adopted by him when evaluating the literary value of the legend of the Tang Dynasty. He affirmed the profound influence it had on Chinese literature after a metaphorical parallel between the legend of the Tang Dynasty and Homeric poetry and other epics. Besides, Zheng also took western and Indian epic poems as examples to have developed a cross-genre comparison at different levels with Chinese literature, which covered a wide range of poetry, Tan Ci (storytelling), Bian Wen , legend, fiction and drama. A case in point is Tan Ci, a genre that can be compared, even equal to epic in Zheng’s eyes. He was more concerned about the Tan Ci that had been underestimated for a long time. His ways of contrasting it with epic has contributed to the reassessment or discovery of Tan Ci’s literary value so as to return its due status. Indeed, there are many similarities between epic and Tan Ci. In his studies, at least four aspects were illustrated: (i) both spread via singers; (ii) of similar performance; (iii) both are full-length masterworks; (iv) with similar narrative structure. In view of the similarities above and the insufficient research of Tan Ci, Zheng commented with a slight regret that “the level of meticulous and profound descriptions in Tan Ci can hardly be reached by ordinary novels. The claim that no epic did exist in China was untenable, because it really made no sense without taking Tan Ci, an example of Chinese epic, into consideration. What a lot of epics we have actually! What a pity that no one studies them!” Aiming at breaking the hierarchical stereotypes in academy and treating Chinese literature equally, Zheng compared Tan Ci to epic, and has enhanced the status of Tan Ci, a genre previously considered far from a refined art in the history of Chinese literature.

Thus it can be seen in the New Culture Movement that Zheng Zhenduo not only advocated but also proactively introduced, translated and reviewed world literature in practice. Epic, as a vital part of world literature, has naturally become a considerable concern for him. His introduction of epics to Chinese literary criticism and re-evaluation of traditional Chinese literature by taking these epic poems as paradigms have relocated civilian literature, which was much underestimated by the literati, to an epic-high status, and his cross-genre comparative study based on the juxtaposition of civilian works and epics together, has proved to be exerting profound and far-reaching influence on academia.

Tan Ci: storytelling to the accompaniment of stringed instruments.

Bian Wen: a popular form of narrative literature flourishing in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in China, with alternate prose and rhymed parts for recitation and singing (often on Buddhistic themes).

Feng Wenkai is from the Literature and Journalism Department at Inner Mongolia University; Wang Lixia is from Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences.