Abstract
Zong Baihua's “On The Tales of the World and the Beauty of the Jin People”is the foundation for research on the aesthetics of the Wei and Jin dynasties. It expounds on the aesthetic spirit in the Wei and Jin dynasties with discourses of "consciousness of personality", which is often traced back to the period of the May Fourth Movement. In fact, this understanding is the result of reinterpretations in the new era. An overlooked fact is that this work was written during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and should be interpreted in the historical and cultural context of this period. The ideological atmosphere during the SecondSino-Japanese War led to a revival of the statement of "empty talk ruins the country", which not only aroused criticism from Jie Zi after the publication of this work, but also contributed to Zong Baihua's efforts to incorporate the May Fourth spirit into the War of Resistance, particularly through reinterpretations of Confucian morality and etiquette, as well as an underlying German approach of Renaissance. The absence of these connotations in the ideological structure of the new era precisely reveals the new repression of "enlightenment”on“salvation".
Keywords
Zong Baihua, the period of Second Sino-Japanese War, the beauty of the Jin people, consciousness of personality, Renaissance
First Page
68
Last Page
77
Recommended Citation
Jin, Lang. 2021. "Imaginations of the Wei and Jin Dynasties in the Time of Historical Fracture: Rereading Zong Baihua's "On The Tales of the World and the Beauty of the Jin People” in the Context of the Second Sino-Japanese War." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 41, (2): pp.68-77. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol41/iss2/7
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