Who can give me some information? The requirement is to prove that Liang Shiqiu's literary criticism theory is "new humanism".

On the influence of new humanism theory on Liang Shiqiu's literary view

After Liang Shiqiu came into contact with Babbitt's new humanism after studying in Harvard, his literary thought changed obviously. Liang Shiqiu changed from a romantic tendency deeply influenced by the May 4th new culture to a classical tendency of new humanism. This paper will discuss the changes of Liang Shiqiu's literary ideas before and after his contact with the new humanism theory from two aspects: his literary creation and literary criticism theory.

Liang Shiqiu; New humanism; Literary view; change

In recent years, the relationship between Babbitt and Liang Shiqiu has become an important topic in the field of modern literature research. In fact, among the overseas students who believed in Babbitt's new humanism theory, Liang Shiqiu's thought changed the most before and after contacting Babbitt's thought, and Liang Shiqiu made the greatest achievement in the field of literary criticism in the 1920s. Liang Shiqiu's literary criticism based on Babbitt's new humanism theory truly established the earliest and most complete systematic theoretical system in modern literature.

Irving babbitt's new humanism is a modern cultural conservative trend of thought that appeared in the United States in the early 20th century and caused widespread debate and social repercussions in the 1920s. It was a western society suffering from the ills of modernity, and there was a kind of self-adjustment and backwash in culture at the beginning of the 20th century. In Babbitt's view, it is the scientific humanitarianism represented by Bacon and the emotional humanitarianism represented by Rousseau that plunged the western society into sin and crisis in the era of expansion. These two kinds of humanitarianism are not real humanitarianism, but old humanitarianism. The old humanism, in his words, is subject to "the law of things", not the law of people. The new humanism advocated by him is to overcome the disadvantages of humanism, advocate to obtain norms, standards and disciplines from classical cultural traditions, improve self-morality with rationality, temperance and self-restraint, and realize individual perfection. Babbitt advocates a moderate and balanced classical aesthetic norm and ethical criticism in literature, and opposes the indulgence and sentimentality of Rousseau-style romanticism.

Liang Shiqiu 1924 was studying at Harvard at the end of the year, and he was once again exposed to Professor Babbitt who influenced his life. Liang Shiqiu's personal exposition of the relationship between him and Babbitt, the first mention of the teacher-student relationship between them, is the preface to the collection Comment on Romance and Classicism written by 1927 in June. In this preface, he said: "I would like to take this opportunity to express my special respect and thanks to Mr. Pro. Erin Babbitt, a professor of French literature at Harvard University, said. If I hadn't learned western literary criticism from him, I would never have written such an article. " In the preface of the anthology Babbitt and Humanism translated for Wu Mi and others, Liang Shiqiu once again mentioned his relationship with Babbitt: "In the thirteenth year of the Republic of China, I studied at Harvard University in the United States. I chose Professor Babbitt's homework'/kloc-literary criticism after the 6th century', which was the beginning of my understanding of Professor Babbitt. " It was after listening to Babbitt's "Literary Criticism since the 6th Century +65438" that Liang Shiqiu began to liquidate his original romantic literary proposition of "Art for Art's sake".

As a creator, Liang Shiqiu changed obviously before and after his contact with Babbitt's thoughts, while as a critic, his critical thoughts and language also changed obviously before and after his contact with Babbitt. Before knowing Babbitt, Liang Shiqiu's ideological tendency was basically romantic and was deeply influenced by the May 4th new culture. At that time, Liang Shiqiu appreciated Guo Moruo's imaginative and passionate Goddess, and criticized Kang's Wild Grass and Yu Pingbo's Winter Night for being too simple and lacking imagination and emotion. Wen Yiduo once listed Liang Shiqiu and Guo Moruo as poets with "imagination" at that time in Winter Night Review: "Today's poets, except Guo Moruo and Liang Shiqiu, have a common fault, that is, their imagination is weak or completely lacking." Caoer Review can be said to be a relatively complete critical paper in which Liang Shiqiu stepped into modern literary criticism. Liang Shiqiu pointed out that the creation of grass has gone too far. Although Liang Shiqiu thinks that poetry is "expressing personal impulse", fundamentally speaking, "artistic impulse" is the initial achievement of artistic works. He points out that "after trying to read Grass, I immediately feel that the author's emotion is too weak and his imagination is too superficial" because "artistic works pray for beauty", "the main duty of poetry is to express emotion, not reasoning" and "the achievement of poetry is centered on emotion" The author also thinks that the emotion in Weeds is too superficial, insincere and strong. Liang Shiqiu also pointed out that "the symptoms are not all the lack of emotion-the weak imagination is also the big reason." The author points out that poetry requires less words and more imagination. "Imagination is everywhere in poetry", "The author's weak imagination is superficial in artistic skills." . He compared the writing methods of sound surface and expressive force in the poetry collection Grass, and thought that the author's imagination was weak and his artistic technique was superficial. Liang Shiqiu's criticism of Grass and his emphasis on the artistic characteristics of poetry can be summarized as follows: poetry should be written with sincere and strong emotions in art, and he puts the emotion and imagination of poetry in the most important position, thinking that "emotion and imagination can be described as the wings and wheels of poetry".

From Liang Shiqiu's representative works of the same period, such as Bitter Rain hentai, Tsunami and Seabirds, we can also see the romantic tendency of his creation at this time. "Bitter wind and bitter rain" is about the homesickness of a wandering brother "Green Brother". He wants to love and say goodbye to his family before leaving. The emotion expressed in the poem and the language used to express it belong to the romantic sadness of "personalization" and "impressionism" in the early May 4th New Literature. The excitement and enthusiasm of young people make Liang Shiqiu tend to be romantic with rich emotions. Tsunami is a new poem, which expresses the "homesickness" that Liang Shiqiu felt on the boat to America. "Seabird" is the first time that a lonely flying seabird compared the homesickness of a wanderer, expressing the most common themes and emotions in the literature of foreign students at that time. Liang Shiqiu's understanding of new poetry at this time is that "new poetry is a free and open garden, and you can write poetry with youthful enthusiasm." Liang Shiqiu's creative tendency at this time is basically the romantic mood of the creative society at that time. In fact, Liang Shiqiu had very close contacts with the main members of the creative society at this time. In the reminiscence article Tsunami, Liang Shiqiu recalled his close contacts with Yu Dafu and Guo Moruo, members of the Creation Society at that time. The only novel written in 1923 describing his feelings of parting was given to the Creation Society.

In addition, we can also see Liang Shiqiu's romantic literary ideas in his comments on Byron, an English romantic poet. Byron and Romanticism were written at the end of University of Colorado 1923. This paper discriminates the concept of "romanticism", summarizes three characteristics of romanticism: freedom of self-expression, freedom of poetic style and freedom of poetic theme, and points out that the essence of romanticism is "liberation", that is, the liberation of people as poets, the liberation of poetic style and the liberation of poetic materials. Liang Shiqiu analyzed the differences between romanticism and classicism in aesthetic concept and literary concept one by one, and strongly denounced classical thought. As a general in the new literature camp, Liang Shiqiu will naturally make great efforts to publicize the reaction of romanticism to classicism. The author strongly praised Rousseau's romanticism for the freedom and liberation of human beings, and also enthusiastically praised the romantic poet Byron, especially his "extreme rebellious spirit".

Liang Shiqiu studied at Harvard University and came into contact with Babbitt's thoughts. After that, Liang Shiqiu's literary thoughts changed from the initial romantic tendency to the classical training and humanistic standards. 1923 Byron and Romanticism, written in Colorado at the end, praised Byron as "like an unruly west wind" and pointed out that the essence of romanticism lies in freedom and liberation. Soon after, 1924, he transferred to the graduate school of Harvard University and took Babbitt's1Literary Criticism after the 6th century. "He had a great influence on my thoughts." His academic paper "Wilde's Aestheticism" submitted to Babbitt became the turning point after he first came into contact with Babbitt's thought. Unlike a year ago when he marveled at Wilde's excellent writing style and regarded it as a model of English, Liang Shiqiu began a preliminary liquidation of Wilde's literary proposition of "art for art's sake". In the article, the author puts forward that "literature and art should be combined with life", "literature should be combined with ethics" and "literature is called morality, which is meaningless; Immoral words are literature, which is simply arrogance. " Comparing these two papers together just reflects Liang Shiqiu's ideological transformation process from advocating romantic literature to liquidating and bidding farewell to the pure artistic proposition of "aestheticism". Literary Anarchism, written in the same period, criticized Rousseau's "genius" and "imagination" as "abnormal", unrestrained self-expansion, unrestrained expression of emotions and indulging in music, resulting in literary anarchy, so Liang Shiqiu put forward "pure imagination" based on "normal human nature".

After coming into contact with Babbitt's classical literature thought, Liang Shiqiu not only introduced the western classical literature theory since Aristotle on a large scale, but also wrote some papers to construct his own classical literature theory. Literary Criticism systematically comments on the major western critics and schools of criticism from Aristotle to the present, and uses Babbitt's critical method to divide all literature into two tendencies: classical and romantic. Romanticism is morbid, because its main point is the infinite development of eccentricity. ""Throughout the history of western literary criticism, it is really a record of the competition between healthy theory and morbid theory. "

Liang Shiqiu's criticism is a kind of judgment in literary criticism. "The so-called judgment includes two steps-judgment and judgment. Evaluation is an effort to distinguish between choices, and evaluation is the determination of grade value. The standard of judgment is fixed and universal, and the motive of judgment is to discuss the truth regardless of utility. Therefore, judgment is not nitpicking, but determining values and standards. Liang Shiqiu quoted Arnold's definition of literary criticism here: "A literary critic is a thinker who does nothing but study and spread the most beautiful wisdom in the world". It also shows that Liang Shiqiu continues Arnold and Babbitt's classicism standard-seeking a long-term, unified and fixed standard in criticism, which is based on pure and normal universal human nature. The responsibility of a critic is to judge and discover the standards and values of literature, so it is a rational choice behavior, which is different from keen and perceptual literary appreciation. However, "since modern times, literature has paid attention to personal originality, literary criticism has gradually become creative literature, and literary creation itself tends to' naturally express emotions'", so literary criticism is interfered by this appreciation or impression criticism, and literary criticism should adhere to objective judgment and be based on certain standards. A certain standard of literary criticism lies in its universal, fixed and normal humanity based on rational discipline. Specific to Liang Shiqiu, this normal human nature is implemented in ethics, so literary criticism must shoulder the heavy responsibility of ethical checks. Along this line of thought, Liang Shiqiu severely criticized scientific criticism, sociological criticism and psychological criticism, which are just an external fact induction, statistics, textual research or abnormal psychological analysis, all of which deviate from the fixed standards of human nature and give up the value judgment and ethical responsibility of criticism.

It should be said that a classical theoretical system advocated by Liang Shiqiu is no different from Arnold and Babbitt in the way of discussion, and even many of its critical languages and methods are directly copied from Arnold and Babbitt. This way of discussion is more clearly reflected in another important paper, The Discipline of Literature. In this paper, the author puts forward that literature discipline lies in "internal sanctions" rather than "external authority" of neoclassicism; "Literature should be masculine and robust, not feminine and gentle", and the imagination of literature should be rational sanctions and moral imagination. It can be said that Liang Shiqiu's critical style and language here are the language and thoughts of Babbitt and Arnold.

Liang Shiqiu was naturally not satisfied with introducing Babbitt's classical theory in general, but the real purpose of theoretical argumentation of a group of intellectuals at that time was the reality of practical needs and problem solving. /kloc-The Romanticism of Modern Literature in China, written in new york at the end of 0/925, was the first time that Liang Shiqiu systematically criticized China's literary creation at that time by using Babbitt's literary viewpoint. The writing and publication of this article marks the birth of Liang Shiqiu as a real literary critic. The publication of Romanticism in Modern Literature in China is the first critical paper with complete theoretical analysis in modern literature. This paper does make a strategic summary and reflection on the first stage of new literature, and to a certain extent, it really hits the key points of fragility, indulgence, sentimentality, laxity, lack of calm observation of ideas, indigestion and random criticism due to the extensive use of foreign literary techniques in the early stage of new literature.

In this article, Liang Shiqiu almost totally denied China's new literature since the May 4th Movement. Liang Shiqiu directly borrowed a viewpoint that Babbitt used when cleaning up the western modern ideological trend, that is, he regarded the history of western thought as two opposing ideological and cultural concepts of "classicism" and "romanticism", and called this method "the orthodoxy of western literary criticism". Liang Shiqiu made a great crusade against the May 4th New Literature Movement from the viewpoint that romanticism is morbid and classicism is healthy classical literature. Liang Shiqiu did not start from the definition of "Romanticism" itself, but from Babbitt's way of explanation, and thought that all irrational and abnormal phenomena were included in his romanticism category. At the beginning of the paper, it is pointed out that the new literature since the May Fourth Movement has "fallen into a romantic chaos", which can be said that it has gone in the wrong direction from the beginning. Liang Shiqiu demonstrated the romantic tendency of new literature from four aspects: "The new literature movement is fundamentally influenced by foreign countries; The new literature movement pays more attention to emotion than rationality; The attitude towards life adopted by the New Literature Movement is impressive. The new literature movement advocated returning to the original and emphasized originality, and put it on the operating table of new humanism. Liang Shiqiu criticized that "any extreme external influence is a feature of romanticism", because "romanticism is vigorous and loose, so romantics welcome external influence without limit" and "have no time to consider selectivity"; At the same time, the pillar of the new literature movement-translating literature, "translators do not take a rational research attitude towards translated foreign works, and people who do what they like try their best to translate." As a result, foreign third-and fourth-rate works are often shipped to China as treasures, competing to imitate them, showing a "romantic chaos" without standards; Liang Shiqiu believes that "China's modern literature is full of lyricism" and that "the New Literature Movement" influenced by foreign countries demands expansion, liberation and freedom everywhere. Emotion is like a tiger in an iron cage, which not only breaks the shackles of ethics, but also throws out the rationality of monitoring emotions. " Liang Shiqiu measured the new literature from his classical rational standard, and asked the lyricist to "examine whether the quality of emotion is pure or not and whether the quantity is moderate". From these two aspects, he "thinks that the new literature praises emotion too much, and the texture of emotion is decadent and false idealism, and there is no rational choice." Liang Shiqiu's deep concern about "emotional worship" and "excesses" comes from Babbitt's resistance to Rousseau-style humanitarianism. Therefore, Liang Shiqiu accused the humanitarianism tendency in the literature describing the weak, the weak and the injured in the early period of new literature. In Liang Shiqiu's view, "fraternity" based on humanitarianism is the "hypothesis" of the concept of equality, not rational, but the expansion of "self-love" and "self-pity". "Infinite sympathy" caused emotional admiration and lost rational choice. Liang Shiqiu's aristocratic thoughts revealed here are incompatible with the humanitarianism and democracy of the May 4th New Culture School. The third feature of Liang Shiqiu's criticism of romanticization of new literature is that "China literature is now dominated by impressionism". In Liang Shiqiu's view, impressionism is the last stream of romanticism, and his outlook on life is based on "flowing philosophy". He described the mutual penetration of poetry, verse and prose, diary novels and travel notes in new literature as the performance of impressionism. These articles are just casual expressions of personal feelings and lose their rationality. At the same time, he also criticized this impressionist criticism of "soul adventure" that denied rational judgment and standard existence. The fourth point of Liang Shiqiu's criticism of romanticism in new literature is to praise nature and originality. In Liang Shiqiu's view, literature should describe universal human nature. However, the originality and individuality pursued by romantics "are bound to be proud of expanding their own quirks, but in fact they are divorced from the center of human nature" and "break all natural and artificial rules and regulations", resulting in confusion. Here, Liang Shiqiu made a complete ethical constraint on the so-called "discipline" to exclude all original, unique, naive and natural literature.

In a word, after Liang Shiqiu contacted Babbitt on 1924 and accepted his new humanistic theory, he realized the transition from romantic passion to classical silence in the May 4th Movement. As a general in the new literature camp, Liang Shiqiu almost turned against each other in the new literature camp before and after contacting Babbitt's new humanism thought. It can be said that Babbitt's new humanism directly contributed to the turn of Liang Shiqiu's creation and criticism, and based on this theory, the most systematic critical theory in the history of modern literary theory was established.

refer to

[1] Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu. Literary theory volume. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 1st Edition: page 33.

Quoted from Duan Huaiqing. Babbitt and China culture. Beijing: Capital Normal University Press, 2006, 1st Edition: 2 1 13.

Wen Yiduo. Complete works of Wen Yiduo. Shanghai: Shanghai Ming Kai Bookstore, 1948 Edition: 149 Page.

Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu. Literary theory volume. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, p. 1 7.

Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu. Literary theory volume. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, version 1, page 2 1.

Liang Shiqiu. Supplement and me. See Liang Shiqiu's Prose 1-4. Beijing: China Radio and Television Press, 1989.

Liang Shiqiu. About Mr. Babbitt and his ideas. Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu. Literary theory volume. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, first edition, June 5438 +2002 10, p. 546.

Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu. Literary theory volume. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, version 1, page 168.

Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu. Literary theory volume. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, the first 1 version, the first 172- 174 page.

[10] On the conclusion of literary criticism, Liang Shiqiu's Literature, pp. 233-224, quoted from Wen Rumin: Liang Shiqiu's Acceptance and Deviation from New Humanism, edited by Chen Pingyuan and Chen Guoqiu: Literary History, the first series, Peking University Publishing House, April 1993.

[1 1] Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu, volume of literary theory. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, the first 1 version, the first 12 1 page.

[12] Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu, volume of literary theory. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, version 1, page 122.

[13] Liang Shiqiu. Collected works of Liang Shiqiu, volume of literary theory. Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House, 2002, 10, p. 34.

See/Lun Wen/Wen Xue/xiandangdai/2008111093965.html.