ABSTRACT
The present trend toward pluralism in Chinese literature emerges from a period of stasis and monism. The new literature movement was an important component of China's new culture movement that began May Fourth. The period from the defeat of the Great Revolution of 1927 to the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution is a 50-year span in which the Chinese leadership made "leftist" errors. The special characteristics of the New Epoch Literature are its content, stressing national introspection; and its form, marking the end of false socialist-realist restrictions and the adoption of an increasing array of writing techniques. The series' unreserved denial of traditional Chinese civilization and its unreserved affirmation of Western civilization conformed with the traditional totalistic Chinese pattern of affirmation or denial; but it also outraged many Chinese. In the policy of reform and opening to the outside world which began to be implemented in the early 1980s, New Epoch Literature gained a fresh impetus.
