From the Perspective of Aesthetic Modernity: Yu Dafu's Literary Trajectory and Spiritual Transformation Before His Martyrdom
Abstract
This study traces Yu Dafu’s pre-martyrdom writing through the lens of aesthetic modernity and maps shifts in his self-representation and literary register. In early fiction, he adopts an autobiographical stance and sketches a “marginalized individual,” using a sentimental, lyrical mode to stage the tension between individualism and national belonging. From 1927 to the eve of the Anti-Japanese War, travel writing and essays broaden his repertoire: nature scenes and humanistic motifs serve as vehicles for introspection and ethical reflection, marking a turn from Romanticist introspection toward a humanist orientation. During the war years, his output grows more instrumental—polemical essays and literary criticism foreground national-salvation themes, while regulated verse continues to voice patriotic sentiment. Read across these phases, the movement from the critical label of “decadent writer” to posthumous “martyr” status illustrates how aesthetic and social modernities intersect in Republican-era Chinese literature without presuming a single, linear culmination.
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