Hu Chuanji's The End of Liberalism as a Literary Ideal is an academic monograph that explores the highly dynamic literary field in China in the late 1940s, with a particular focus on liberalism as a literary ideal and its eventual inadequacy in that historical context. Based on meticulous research of a large number of original documents, such as articles from newspapers, periodicals, and journals, the book provides not only a convincing account of the lives and works of Chinese liberal intellectuals and writers in the few years before the communist takeover in China in 1949 but also cogent insights into the changing dynamics within China's literary environment in this crucial historical period.
The middle and late 1940s were particularly difficult times for China, as well as the rest of the world. After the end of World War II, a series of significant events occurred, most notably Winston Churchill's “Iron Curtain”...