Literature and Chinese Literature in and before the Modern Era

This paper focuses on the theme of nature and childhood as represented in and before modern Chinese literature1 and 19th century English literature.Compared with Chinese literature,childhood and nature awareness in English literature is not only produced later,but also interwoven with a more complicated political and historical background.A study of Chinese and English modern literature shows that China has historically favored spiritually over materialism,its agrarian roots only recently giving way to industrialization.England,on the other hand,has had to learn painful lessons from industrialization in order to recover its long-lost self.Though the notions of nature and childhood in modern Chinese and English literature have their roots in Chinese and Western classical philosophies,which can be traced back respectively to Taoism and Platonism,it has taken centuries for modern English literature to become keenly and fully aware of that and try to restore this primordial fact.