《The Modernity of Wang Guowei′s Literary Criticism》.doc

The Modernity of Wang Guoweis Literary criticism Wen Rumin When did modern Chinese literary criticism begin？ Many scholars designate1917，the year of the onslaught of the Literary Revolution，as its starting point，but as early as 1904，the appearance of WangGuoweisA Discussion of A Dreamof Red Mansions” had broken new ground by applying Western critical theoriesand methods to the evluation of an ancient Chinese literary masterpiece．Formmany years， although people have not denied that the critical view and method which this work expressed had initiated a break with the framework of traditional literary criticism， they found it difficult to see this work as the niception ofmodern criticism． Such ajudgment， while failing to correcty evaluate WangGuoweis position in the history of literary criticism， also failed to ctearly outlinehistorical conditions at the time of the inception of modern literary criticism． Theearliest manifestation of the transition in Chinese literary criticism from classicalto modern forms was the work of Wang Guowei；he proclaimed the conclusionof the age of classical criticism and opened the curtain on the age of moderncriticism. I．A New Field of Vision in he Criticism ofMisreadings Wang Guowei made the first moves in opening up the field of moderncriticism， namely to introduce Western critical thinking methods and to breakthrough the limitations of traditonal criticism．In a 1905 article，“A Discussion of the Intellectual World of resent years”（Lun jinnian zhi xueshujie）， heacknowledged that external stimuli could be advantageous for the developmentof Chinese Intellectual thought，as for example when the introduction of Buddhistthought in the Six Dynasties Penod greatly altered the consermtism and the“Intellectual improvehment”which characterized the Confucianists during theHan Dynasty and later．“Since the Song and down to the present dynasty，”hewrote，“thought has remained fixed in a sim