What are the two schools of literary and artistic creation methods?

There are two schools of literary and artistic creation: realism and romanticism.

There are many ways of literary creation, among which realism and romanticism are the most important. It is generally believed that the realistic creation method focuses on the objective description of things, and the writer's aesthetic ideal is integrated into artistic description; It requires the authenticity of detail description, the typicality of artistic generalization and the description of typical characters in typical environment. Romantic writing techniques often highlight the writer's subjective feelings unabashedly, with peculiar structure and emphasis on expression, and often use deformed hypothetical means to create powerful characters.

Since the May 4th New Literature Movement, writers' creative methods have experienced a relatively rapid development process. As far as the whole history of modern literature is concerned, realistic creative methods occupy the mainstream position.

Before and after the May 4th Movement, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Mao Dun and the Literature Research Association strongly advocated realism. At that time, realism and realism were synonyms, sometimes called "naturalism". Guo Moruo and Chuangshe showed a romantic tendency in their literary thoughts and creative practice. The different creative methods advocated by these two schools were formed on the basis of inheriting China's classical literary tradition, absorbing the influence of foreign literary thoughts, and combining with the literary movement at that time in the thorough anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary trend. Later, in the debate of revolutionary literature, we also noticed the difference between the old and new realistic creation methods. 1April, 933, Zhou Yang wrote On Socialist Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism, which introduced the creative method of socialist realism to China for the first time, and the concept of "creative method" was also introduced to China at this time. 1942, Mao Zedong clearly pointed out in "Speech at Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art" that "we advocate socialist realism" in artistic methods. 1September, 953, at the second congress of literary and art workers in China, it was once again made clear that "the method of socialist realism must be further developed" and that "the direction of socialist realism is the basic direction of the new literature movement in China since the May 4th Movement". After 1958, Mao Zedong put forward the creative method of "combining revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism".

In recent years, literary and art theorists have re-discussed the creative methods such as realism, revolutionary realism, socialist realism, and the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism. Many writers also absorbed some creative methods of western modernism.