Abstract
This essay proposes to explore the relevance of the avant-garde to Chinese revolutionary literature in twentieth-century cultural politics, and especially in the revolutionary period when the avant-garde or xianfeng pai was not yet a commonly used discourse in the Chinese consciousness. Re-problematizing the avant-garde, this essay aims to reveal a problematic constellation of the aesthetic avant-garde, the political vanguard, and romanticism in Chinese revolutionary literary discourses.