What are the characteristics of May Fourth Literature?

Modern Chinese literature has gone through three major periods of development, or three decades.

The first decade (1917-1927) is generally referred to as the "May Fourth" period.

In early 1917, Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu published Ruminations on Literary Improvement and Theory of Literary Revolution in New Youth, marking the official rise of the literary revolution movement. Subsequently, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun, Li Dazhao and others actively echoed the idea of literary revolution and pushed forward the development of literary revolution. The new literary works created by Lu Xun, Guo Moruo and others showed the actual achievements of the Literary Revolution and demonstrated the substantial progress of the new literature. As for novels, there were Lu Xun's epoch-making "The Story of the Madman**" and the novels later collected in "Scream" and "Indecision", as well as a large number of new literary writers such as Ye Shaojun, Wang Jingxi, Bingxin, Yu Dafu, etc. who created novels with new contents and forms; as for poems, there appeared a large number of new poets in vernacular language, such as Hu Shi, Liu Bannong, Shen Yinmo, Liu Dabai, etc., which broke the authentic status of the old metered poems in vernacular language in the past thousand years, especially Guo Moruo. In particular, Guo Moruo's "Goddess" created a generation of free-form vernacular poetry with its content and artistic momentum; the achievements in prose are reflected in the large number of short essays (i.e., essays and miscellaneous essays) written by Lu Xun, Li Dazhao and others, and the lyrical and narrative prose (i.e., "beautiful essays") written by Zhou Zuoren, Yu Pingbo, Zhu Ziqing and Xu Dishan, and also by Qu Zuoren, Yu Pingbo, Zhu Ziqing, Xu Dishan and others. "), as well as Qu Qiubai's "Hungry Township Chronicle" and "Chidu Heart History" and other newsletters, the initial germ of reportage literature; ...... all these creations show a new weather to create a new generation of literary style, full of the "May Fourth" spirit of the era of the break with the old and establish the new. "After 1921, there were also "problem novels", "side novels", and "vernacular literature", "Problem Novels", "Novels Around Us", "Vernacular Literature", "Silk Literature", "Symbolism" and other rich and colorful styles and genres appeared after 1921. The emergence of these societies and genres demonstrated the maturity and growth of the new literature.

The second decade (1927-1937) is often called the "Left League" period.

Indicates that literary creation reached a new depth of thought. Mao Dun's realist masterpieces of this period, such as Ziyou (The Night of the Son), Lin Jia Pu Zi (The Shop of the Lin Family), and Rural Trilogy, as well as the creations of writers and groups such as Jiang Guangchi, Hong Shen, Tian Han, Zang Kejia, Ding Ling, Zhang Tianyi, Ye Zi, and Hong Lingfei, as well as the Five Martyrs of the Left League, the Northeastern Writers' Group, and the Chinese Poetry Society, all show that the left-wing proletarian revolutionary literature has reached a new depth of thought. The creation of writers and groups such as the Five Martyrs of the Left League, the Northeast Writers' Group, the Chinese Poetry Society and so on all show the brilliant achievements of the left-wing proletarian revolutionary literature.

The third decade (1937-1949) included the literature of the War of Resistance and the War of Liberation.

The former stage was the literature of the early stage of the Resistance War. A large number of popular and lucid, short and concise literary works, such as street poems and one-act plays, emerged around the anti-*** salvation movement, as well as some large-scale collective creations. In the latter stage in the liberated areas, Mao Zedong's "Speech at the Yan'an

Colloquium on Literature and Art" clarified the direction that literature and art should serve the workers, peasants, and soldiers, and solved a series of important theoretical and practical problems of literature and art since the May Fourth Movement, opening up a new stage of proletarian revolutionary literature.

Many works in the Nationalist Region have also made efforts to develop in the direction of national forms and popularization, and have achieved gratifying results.