Title: Introduction to Chinese Cultural History / The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature / 01.2 May Fourth 1915–1925

Front: Is May Fourth a valid category for understanding literature of the early Republic?
Back: Hockx questions that it is, but Denton says it is still a necessary tool to discuss literary modernity.

Front: What is May Fourth as opposed to New Culture?
Back: Denton says May Fourth also describes a broader cultural movement, and that this movement is also called New Culture movement. The movement is both different from and closely related to the anti-imperialist nationalism expressed when students marched to Tian'anmen Square on May 4^th.

Front: How is May Fourth different from the late Qīng modernity discourse?
Back: May Fourth deepened and enhanced the modernity discourse inherited from the late Qīng. People argue about "Antitraditionalism, democracy, science, enlightenment, individualism, evolution, nation, and revolution, a hodgepodge of sometimes conflicting concepts". Now central to the discourse is a totalistic attack on tradition (iconoclasm).
Confucian value system is attacked by westernized writers as hierarchical, oppressively authoritarian, and constricting the individual, e.g.:
- Wu Yu (1871–1949),
- Lu Xun (1881–1936),
- Chen Duxiu (1880–1942),
- Gao Yihan (1885–1968),
- Yi Baisha (1886–1921).

Front: What is a key concept affected by the May Fourth iconoclasm?
Back: Replacing classical language with modern written vernacular, suggested e.g. by Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu. They argue that vernacular can "better portray social and emotional realities and serve as the new national language".

Front: Vernacular in verse: what are some people that started experimenting with it after May Fourth?
Back: - Hu Shi,
- Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967),
- Xu Yunuo (1893–1958),
- Xu Zhimo (1897–1931),
- Bing Xin (1900–1998),
- Yu Pingbo (1899–1990),
- Guo Moruo

Front: Vernacular fiction in May Fourth: what were the two main styles, who promoted each style?
Back: - a style that some writers themselves labelled "realism" (Lu Xun), promoted by Literary Association,
- "romantic mode of self-expression" (Yu Dafu in fiction, Guo Moruo in poetry), promoted by Creation Society.

Front: How was the relationship of the Creation Society with the Literary Association?
Back: Creation Society and Literary Association were "not nearly so at odds as conventionally thought [...] romantic and realist ethos coexisted within individual writers or across the boundaries set by polemical debates between literary societies".

Front: What are some characteristics of the new national literary language that writers in the early period experimented with?
Back: - "a hybrid of premodern vernacular,
- Liáng Qǐchāo’s “new style,”
- Western and Japanese grammatical forms,
- foreign loanwords, and
- remnants of classical Chinese."

Front: What was the position of May Fourth writers towards entertainment fiction?
Back: "May Fourth writers [...] shared a disdain for entertainment fiction deprecatingly labeled 'Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies' fiction"

Front: What are some forms of "Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies" fiction?
Back: - Knight-errant novels,
- detective fiction,
- comedic satires, and
- sentimental love stories.

Front: How did May Fourth Writers differ from Butterfly writers in terms of language and literary form?
Back: Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies
"some of the narrative and rhetorical forms of premodern fiction"
May Fourth
"highly Westernized, or Japanized, prose style"
"experimented with the narrative modes, poetic forms, and dramatic styles of the modern West"

Front: How were journals important for literary societies?
Back: - "stable venue for publication of members' writings"
- "forums for manifestos and polemics"

Front: What changed for women writers with May Fourth?
Back: - "women writers were active in the late imperial period",
- undermines May Fourth movement view: "women [...] completely silenced by a patriarchal tradition",
- true that more women writers emerged and more publicly:
  - Mostly women from "economic and social elite" with "access to Western-style education",
  - unlike men, "tended to write about love and domestic life".