Shen Congwen Literary Thought and the Development of Chinese Modern Literature

The study presents a reflection on the Chinese literature at the beginning of the twentieth century prompted by an examination of the non-fiction works written by Shen Congwen. This author wrote between the 1920s and 1940s and was driven by his conviction that literature would have changed China’s future. He concentrated on issues such as originality, creativity and imagination, without which he felt literary works could not be produced, and encouraged young authors to carry out research on style and experimentation in order to create a new body of literature and a new poetical language in a particularly delicate moment of Chinese history influenced by an escalation of Marxist aesthetic theories.