Repressed Religious Modernity: Zhu Weizhi and the Rise of the Bible as Literature in Modern China, 1925–35

Abstract

This article examines the origin and early development of the Bible as literature in China in the second and third decades of the 20th century, as represented by the works of the single most influential literary critic in this regard, Zhu Weizhi. It argues that the rise of the Bible as literature in China since its inception is best understood as a repressed religious modernity among the multiple forms of Chinese literary modernity. The case study of Zhu Weizhi in the first decade of his literary-critical life (1925–35) may enrich our understanding of both the globalisation of the literary readings of the Bible in the 20th century and the complex, underrepresented, entanglements of religion and literature in modern China.