China and the West

Xu, Shulun. Qing chu Shashibiya jie shao zhong de zi chan jie ji si xiang [ID D23910].
Li Ruru : Xu Shulun set the criteria for Shakespeare interpretation in the new China. He stated that "Shakespeare studies has long been controlled by bourgeois thought", citing the example of Hamlet where despite voluminous essays on the play "none of the critics could successfully solve the puzzles of the character. The essential reasons for not being able to do so are first of all, [those critics] ignored the spirit of the time when the English bourgeois revolution was under way ; in addition, they abandoned the humanism in the English Renaissance. They thus could not see where the composition [of Shakespeare's works] was based". Having quoted Marx, Engels, Pushkin, Belinsky and Morozov, Xu asserted that the USSR, the "second motherland of Shakespeare", had already eliminated bourgeois thought from Shakespearean scholarship, and the Soviet Shakespeareans had thus established an ideal model for the Chinese scholars. He further insisted that "the most urgent task for us Shakespeareans in the Chinese cultural realm is to apply Marxism to the correct interpretation and introduction of Shakespeare ; to eliminate the influence of European and American schools and their theories on our Shakespeare studies".