Literary historians tend to deal with China’s earliest ‘new poets’ with scant regard. These poets are thought to have been the experimenters, the forerunners whose only task it was to fail so that others might succeed. Their pluriform and many-sided work is consequently only discussed in footnotes and introductory chapters.
Focusing on the poetry and poetics of the eight authors of A Snowy Morning (1922), and on contemporary and modern reception of their work, the present study not only offers a detailed view of the period during which modern Chinese poetry took shape, but also presents a new outlook on the modernity of early ‘new poetry’ itself.