Wang Guowei

Wang Guowei (born December 3, 1877, Haining, Zhejiang province, China—died June 2, 1927, Beijing) was a Chinese scholar, historian, literary critic, and poet known for his Western approach to Chinese history.

Having failed the provincial examination in 1893, Wang attended Hangzhou Chongwen Academy. In 1898 he entered the Dongwen Learning Society, founded by the scholar Luo Zhenyu; it was there that he first came into contact with Western learning. In 1901 he held the post of chief editor of Jiaoyu shijie (“Education World”). He went to study in Japan the same year but returned to China one year later due to illness. He then began his own studies and read Western philosophy and literary works. He employed Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy in Hongloumeng pinglun (1904; “Comments on Dream of the Red Chamber”), his analysis of the classic Chinese novel. In 1908 he published the first 21 pieces of Renjian cihua (“Notes on Ci Poems in the World”); in this work he first advanced his “theory of realm,” which asserted that a successful poem integrates descriptions of scenery and emotions. When the Chinese Revolution of 1911 broke out, Wang went with Luo Zhenyu to Japan and lived there for five years. In January 1913 he finished writing Song-Yuan xiqushi (“History of Traditional Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties”).

In 1923—by order of Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty (who had been forced to abdicate in 1912)—Wang acted as nanshufang xingzou (a literary attendant in the South Chamber) to serve the imperial house. In 1925 he was engaged by Qinghua University as a tutor at the Research Institute of Chinese National Culture. Before the Northern Expedition Army reached Beijing, he drowned himself to show his loyalty to the imperial house.

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Wang was the first to apply Western philosophy, aesthetics, and literary theory to the study of Chinese history and literature, profoundly influencing historiography in China. He combined the essence of Chinese literature with that of Western literature and put forward a complete theory of literature and art, with the “theory of realm” as its core. His study of ancient Chinese traditional opera and novels also set standards for scholarship in those areas. His major works were published in 16 volumes as Wang Guowei yishu (1983; “Collected Writings of Wang Guowei”).