Abstract:
As the greatest authority in Chinese history of dissemination of Marxist theory of literature and art, Qu Qiubai made enormous contributions to the systematic project of translating and interpreting Marxist theory of literature and art. However, he also left misunderstandings in the theoretical illustration and historical evaluation in his work on Plekhanov, causing some obscure conclusions and guesses with regard to dissemination and appraisal of this Marxist classic. In fact, Qu basically took a critical view of Plekhanov's works of literary theory. He thought that Plekhanov's mistakes in literary theory and aesthetics lay mainly in his “non-dialectical methodology” while those in philosophy existed in his choice of political or party's stand. Historically, Qu's evaluation of Plekhanov was a bit more leftist but a little more retrogressive than Lenin's. This paper focuses discussion on exploration of background of artistic philosophy and aesthetic thinking and differentiation of knowledge.
