Born on December 19, 1898 in Yongjia, Zhejiang Province (now Wenzhou), Zheng Zhenduo was active in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, and together with Zhai Qiubai and others, he founded the New Society Lenten Magazine to advocate social reform; in November 1920, he was involved in the founding of the Society for Literary Studies.
In the spring of 1921, he went to work in the compilation office of the Commercial Press; on May 10th, the organ of the Society for Literature Studies, Literature Lenten, edited by him, was launched.
In January 1922, he founded Children's World, the earliest children's literature publication in China, and in January 1923, he succeeded Shen Yanbing as editor-in-chief of Novel Monthly, and at the same time, he taught at Shanghai University. During this period, he wrote many articles criticizing the old feudal literature.
In 1924, he published A Brief History of Russian Literature. In 1924, he published A Brief History of Russian Literature. After the May 30th tragedy, he and Ye Shaojun founded Justice Daily to expose the atrocities of imperialism. In the same year, he participated in the founding of the China Relief Society, and signed and published the Declaration on the Protection of Human Rights with Guo Moruo and Shen Yanbing.
In February 1927, he and Ye Shaojun, Hu Yuzhi and others initiated the establishment of the "Shanghai Writers' Association", and in May 1927, he resided in Paris. In May 1927, he traveled to Paris, where he published Outline of Literature, and returned to China in early 1929, where he taught at Yanjing and Fudan Universities and edited Literature magazine.
In 1932, he published An Illustrated History of Chinese Literature, and in 1934, he published Collected Essays on Chinese Literature and The Collection of Rickets, etc. In the spring of 1935, he went to Shanghai to become the dean of the Faculty of Literature at Jinan University, and edited a series of books in the World Literature Library.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance, he took part in the launching of the Shanghai Cultural Salvation Association and the founding of the Salvation Daily. 1938 saw the publication of A History of Chinese Popular Literature.
During the war, he and Hu Guizhi, Xu Guangping and others organized the "Restoration Society", published "The Complete Works of Lu Xun", "The History of the United *** Party", "Lenin Wenxun", etc., and edited "The Atlas of Chinese Printmaking History", 5 series and 24 volumes. After the victory of the war, he initiated the organization of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy and edited the weekly magazine Democracy.
After the founding of New China, he served as director of the Cultural Relics Bureau of the Ministry of Culture, director of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and vice minister of the Ministry of Culture.
On October 18, 1958, Zheng Zhenduo was killed in a plane crash while leading a Chinese cultural delegation on a visit to Afghanistan and other countries.
Expanded Information:
Achievements of Zheng Zhenduo:
Zheng Zhenduo has made He has made outstanding contributions in many aspects. In the field of literary theory, he was one of the most important advocates of "life for life" literature at the beginning of the Literary Revolution.
In June 1921, he further put forward the slogan of the need for "literature of blood and tears" ("Literature of Blood and Tears"), and demanded that progressive writers produce "red works with blood and tears" ("Our Miscellany").
Since then, he has adhered to the revolutionary realist theory of literature throughout his life, emphasizing the function of literature in social reform and advocating that literature serve the people.
In the field of literary research, he advocated and engaged in a comprehensive comparative study of Chinese and foreign ancient and modern literature in the early 1920s, and early proposed and started to organize and study the history of Chinese literature with a new point of view and methodology, especially focusing on the collection of data and research on folk literature, novels and operas, and did a lot of pioneering work.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Zheng Zhenduo