Literature High and Low

Abstract

The twentieth century has been the heyday of Chinese fiction. It is only natural that as soon as scholars began to notice this ‘highest order of literature’, large numbers of histories of fiction would come out. The late Qing new novelists’ efforts to reform literature were thwarted; the May Fourth writers were the ones who genuinely ushered in a new epoch in Chinese fiction. Owing to the success of the New Culture Movement and its enormous motivating effect on later generations, the Literary Revolution has slowly developed into a ‘creation myth’. First of all, literary critics of the late Qing and May Fourth periods hardly used the concept of tongsu xiaoshuo. Zhou Zuoren’s essays ‘Common People’s Literature’ and ‘Human Literature’, published in 1918, were the most influential literary treatises of the May Fourth period. May Fourth new literature was built on resistance against ‘popular fiction’.