Revival of Literary Nature and Summary of Traditional Literature: Brief Discussion of the Advocates of the "Back to the Ancients" Literary Drive

The invasion of literature by Neo-Confucianism infringed the literary nature. Qian qi zi grasped passion, the most fundamental core of literature, and took it as the basic point for the revival of literature. Hou Qi zi, being a-gainst the school of Tang-Song scholars infiltrated by the Left, further defended literary independence. But both of them failed to have a good grasp of the relationship between passion and style and fell into the impasse of imitating the ancients mechanically. In the later period Wang Shizhen endeavored to seek the union of the two and integrated plenty of opposite categories and schools of Chinese literary theory and creation. Up to then, Chinese traditional literature came to the end of its logic course of self-growth. So such modern literary factors as individualism did not appear until the late Ming Dynasty.