Abstract: While the diaristic form of A Madman’s Diary (1918) by Lu Xun has been widely recognized in academia, its diaristic tradition has so far received little attention, a phenomenon stemming primarily from the fact that the diary format itself is ostensibly self-evident enough in form to expel excessive academic controversy. On the other hand, academia has predominantly regarded its form as derivative of Gogol’s fiction, thereby overlooking the influence of China’s native diaristic tradition on its composition. By the late Qing Dynasty, or the turn of the 20th century, the diaristic genre had evolved into a literary form circulating among master-disciple circles and friends as a medium of mutual admonition that was primarily devoted to healing maladies and moral self-correction. While engaged with Western modernist individualism, Lu Xun simultaneously emphasized the moral essence of traditional revivalism. Thus in his revolutionary text A Madman’s Diary, he adopted the self-cultivation diary genre–a conventional form for the literati–yet implemented modern transformations in its content, form, and circulation. This textual strategy manifests the clash between the old and new moralities, as well as the entanglement of tradition and modernity.

Key words: A Madman’s Diary, diaristic form, self-cultivation diary, modern transformation