Hu Chuan, Jin Ping Mei, etc.
The emergence of "vernacular Chinese" as "slogan" and "noun" is closely related to the vernacular Chinese movement in the late Qing Dynasty. Huang Zunxian, the forerunner of the "New Poetry School", put forward "I wrote by hand, why should I be detained"; Liang Qichao, Xia Cengyou and Tan Sitong advocated "revolution in poetry"; Liu Yazi, the leader of Nanshe Society, presided over the autonomous vernacular newspaper, which was mainly written in vernacular. During this period, "Qiu and others called for the promotion of vernacular Chinese". Once, the supplement of Shenbao, the earliest vernacular newspaper in modern times, appeared in 1887. "According to the information available today, there were 140 kinds of vernacular newspapers and periodicals in the last decade of the late Qing Dynasty." The vernacular movement in the late Qing Dynasty initiated the May 4th vernacular movement, but its nature was different from that of the May 4th vernacular movement. It still belongs to the category of ancient vernacular Chinese. "The vernacular Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty is different from the vernacular Chinese now. Not vernacular literature. Just because we want to reform the law, let ordinary citizens know some words and read some newspapers, we can understand a little about national politics. Therefore, we believe that writing articles in vernacular Chinese can get greater results. " Levies "Now the vernacular is' write whatever you say'. It was written by stereotyped writing at that time ... "⑽
"Vernacular", as a genre category of modern literature in China, is a literary phenomenon different from writing articles with "Vernacular", which eventually replaced classical Chinese as the main written expression and was the vernacular movement in the May 4th Movement. 19 17 1 Hu Shi published "My humble opinion on literary improvement" in New Youth, proposing "eight noes" and advocating "living literature", which is the origin of the whole vernacular movement. In 65438+February of the same year, Chen Duxiu published "On Literary Revolution" in "New Youth" and proposed "Three Cardinals" to echo it. Later, Hu Shi wrote articles such as On the Literary Concept of History and On the Literary Revolution of Construction, and proposed that "writing poetry is like writing" and "literature of an era has its own era". During this period, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Liu Bannong and Qian all wrote articles to clarify their views on the "literary revolution". As an advocate of the vernacular movement, Hu Shi knows well the relationship between ideological content and stylistic form. "I also know that vernacular Chinese is not new literature, and I also know that new literature must have new ideas and new spirits." ⑾ However, limited by the long-standing traditional concepts and the complexity of objective conditions, he emphasized the opposition and division between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese, and spared no effort to advocate the instrumentality of vernacular Chinese. "The vernacular literature tool is a new invention that several young students have been looking for in the United States for more than a year." ⑿ Compared with Hu Shi's radical, paranoid and decisive attitude, Zhou Zuoren should calm down. While emphasizing the reform of writing, he paid more attention to the reform and transformation of ideas. Otherwise, despite the use of vernacular Chinese, "thoughts are still absurd and harmful" and "there is no strict boundary between ancient Chinese and vernacular Chinese, so life and death are also difficult to distinguish." [13] Liu Bannong also thinks that classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese "have their own strengths and differences". "From June 5438 to June 09201October 65438, according to the decree issued by the Ministry of Education at that time, all Chinese classes in schools across the country were taught in a unified manner." 14. This marks the initial victory of the May 4th vernacular movement, but there are also serious problems in the vernacular: lack of aesthetic significance; Separation of ideological content and written expression. Hu Shi has long realized this. "If future literati can't create a vernacular literature that can be passed down from generation to generation for the May 4th Movement ... there is no way to convince ancient writers." . ⒂ In this respect, the vernacular novels Diary of a Madman, Poems, Zhou Zuoren's Series of Beautiful Articles and Bing Xin-ti's novels are of pioneering or foundation significance. In the first decade of new literature, the creation of vernacular Chinese was carried out in various genres and tested in practice. Among them, the most controversial is vernacular poetry (new poetry). Hu Shi's creation broke the rules of traditional poetry, but it brought a tendency of "non-poeticization"; Guo Moruo's Goddess can pay more attention to the laws of poetry itself (especially images); The emergence of Crescent School is the inversion of the former two, which makes poetry "standardized" and establishes the modern aesthetic principles of vernacular new poetry in the connection between "new" and "old".
Throughout the "May 4th" vernacular movement, we can see that it absorbed the western vocabulary resources and grammatical structure extensively, and developed at many levels such as language, writing and thought. This movement is not only a "self-sufficient change within the language", but also closely related to the innovation of the whole thinking concept and the national modernization movement. The contest between "vernacular Chinese" and "classical Chinese" is also a collision of two different value systems and social ideologies to a great extent.
"Vernacular writing" is closely related to popular spoken language. "Popular language is not a special language other than vernacular Chinese.' Popularization' means that vernacular Chinese can be understood to the greatest extent." ⒃ Lu Xun believes that "to advocate popular language means to have a simpler vernacular", and ⒄Some critics believe that the vernacular movement is a prelude to the mass movement; In fact, there are differences between the two concepts, and we can't blindly equate the "vernacular movement" with "popularization". In addition, the vernacular movement is also the theoretical starting point of "mass literature and art" in the leftist period in the 1930s and "literature and art serving the masses" in the liberated areas in the 40s. The latter is the extension and prominence of the former, and it is also accompanied by the narrowing of the concept connotation. After the establishment of "vernacular Chinese" as a category of modern literature, there are still some arguments and explanations, mainly focusing on the level of "reflection", such as Qian Gurong's reflection on vernacular Chinese and so on.