First published in 1968, this volume of essays, posthumously edited by the author’s brother Professor C. T. Hsia (a prominent Columbia University professor of Chinese literature), focuses on Chinese literary criticism relating to the work of leftist Chinese writers, including Lu Hsün, Chiang Kuang-tz’u, the “Five Martyrs,” and Chü Ch’iu-po, who were sympathetic to the ideals of the pre-1949 Chinese communist party. As one of the few foundational texts to provide a critical overview of the aesthetics and politics of China’s leftist literary movement, The Gate of Darkness examines the conflicting dilemmas between leftist authors’ own ideals and the strict ideological frameworks imposed by the propaganda policies of the Chinese communist party in the early twentieth century.Hsia’s essays are exciting reading precisely because Mr. Hsia approached his subject not merely with the index-cards of a historian but also with the sensitive eyes of a novelist. Tsi-an Hsia is a creative and compassi
劉若愚教授在英美多年,深感西洋學者在談論文學一般時,動不動就以西方希臘羅馬以來的文學傳統為馬首是膽,而忽視了東方另一個不同但毫不劣於西方的文學傳統。正如他在「導論」和「結語」中所暗示的,在談論文學時,由於這本書的出現,西洋學者今後不能不將中國的文學理論也一併加以考慮,否則不能談論「普遍的文學理論」(universal theory of literature)或「文學」(literature)一般