A Modernity Set to a Pre-Modern Tune: Classical-Style Poetry of Modern Chinese Writers (Ideas, History, and Modern China)

In A Modernity Set to a Pre-Modern Tune , Haosheng Yang studies the classical-style poems of the most iconoclastic May Fourth Chinese writers and highlights the use of traditional language and forms as a salient facet of Chinese literary modernity. In A Modernity Set to a Pre-Modern Tune , Haosheng Yang provides an in-depth study of the classical-style poems of the most iconoclastic May Fourth Chinese writers (Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Zhou Zuoren, Guo Moruo, and Nie Gannu) and highlights the five literary masters' engagement with traditional lyricism as their critical response to the sociopolitical turbulence of twentieth-century China. This study challenges the bias against classical forms as allegedly outdated modes incapable of representing modern reality in current Chinese literary history. Yang's fascinating book positions modern Chinese literature's formalistic nonlinearity, representational experiences, and aspiration for a new voice through an old form as factors that are all crucial to exploring more fully the blurred boundary between the traditional and the modern Contents Acknowledgements Introduction New Voices in an Old Form: Rethinking the Classical-Style Poetry of Modern Chinese Writers Chapter 1 The Call to Write: Lu Xun’s Poetic Self-Affirmation in a Time of Crisis Chapter 2 An Infatuation with a Skeleton: Yu Dafu’s Accidental Loyalism and Classical-Style Poetry Chapter 3 Affection or Disaffection: The Lyricism of the “Traitor” Zhou Zuoren Chapter 4 The Political Transformation of Romantic Lyricism: Guo Moruo’s Classical-Style Poems in Response to Mao Zedong Chapter 5 Hard to be Reformed: Nie Gannu and His Classical-Style Poems Conclusion Selected Bibliography Index