The " Decadent" Turn of Modernist Literature Image in China

In the May Fourth period, Chinese writers kept a romantic enthusiasm on modernist literature, focusing on its avant-garde spirits in anti-tradition and pro-individualism. They project on the literature expectations of enlightening mass people and guiding lives. After the May Fourth period,Chinese intellectuals shifted their pursuit of modernity from cultural enlightenment to social revolution. In the new cultural context, the modernist literature was increasingly attacked by Left writer as a decadent,corrupted bourgeoisie arts and the opposite to proletarian revolutionary literature. Such a decadent turn of modernist thoughts in Chinese modern literature history is a result from both the outer social factors and inner artistic factors. It is also due to the heavy influence of radical literary thoughts from Russia and Japan as well as the doctrines advanced by early Marxist literary theorists.