Zhu Guangqian

Zhu Guangqian (朱光潛; 19 September 1897 – 6 March 1986) is the founder of the study of aesthetics in 20th-century China.

Zhu graduated from the Anhui Province Tongcheng Secondary School. After earning his BA from Hong Kong University, he went abroad to study aesthetics at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London, then to France and the University of Strasbourg where he earned his doctorate. Later, he returned to China to write The Psychology of Tragedy (悲劇心理學), On Beauty (談美), The Psychology of Art (文藝心理學), On Poetry (詩論), A History of Western Aesthetics (西方美學史), and Letters on Beauty (談美書簡). In the 1930s in Beijing, Zhu Guangqian hosted a literary salon that met monthly to recite prose and poetry, east and west. Regulars included Zhou Zuoren (周作人), Zhu Ziqing (朱自清), Zheng Zhenduo (鄭振鐸), Feng Zhi (馮至), Shen Congwen (沈從文), Bing Xin (冰心), Ling Shuhua (淩淑華), Bian Zhilin (卞之琳), Lin Huiyin (林徽因) and Xiao Qian (蕭乾). These were pivotal figures in Republican literature, and it can perhaps be argued that the salon was important to the formation of the so-called Beijing style literature (京派文學) of the period.