Ta Kung Pao Literary Supplement and Literary Ethics: Revisit and Review

In the early twentieth century, China experienced a period of social turbulence when traditional ethics were questioned, challenged, and regarded as a hindrance to the country’s development and modernization. Wu Mi, editor in chief of Ta Kung Pao Literary Supplement, apprehended the danger of moral degeneration during a time of social transformation. Noting the role of literary criticism as a help to the establishment of a proper ethical system, he published a series of essays in which he proposed that the core value of literature was moral education. These essays move from the literary works to the morality of writers and are still valuable today when the ethical nature of literature is reemphasized.