Abstract: Although the anti-tradition trend is the mainstream of the May 4th New Literature Movement, the influence of tradition never disappeared. The anxiety from the contra-directional influences forced writers to adjust the relationship between tradition and anti-tradition by using various rhetorical strategies. From this perspective, YU Dafu's collection of fiction Depression (chen lun) reveals that the author also made a meticulous “aesthetic defense”, though the bold exposure and pathological description in his works could be considred as shocking. The purpose of the hero's Christian confession is to guide readers into his understandable and sympathetic inner world and to make logical attribution for his external behaviors. Based on this narrative orientation, the aesthetic defense in each chapter in Depression constitutes an organically advanced “trilogy”. YU Dafu realized his defense by finding excuses for the protagonist's behavior against the traditional family ethics in “Death of Silver Gray” (yin hui se de si), by attributing the protagonist's personal degeneration to the weakness of the country in “Depression”, and by merging the the cracks of aesthetic defense after the first two novels in “Migration to the South” (nan qian). In addition, the noval writer introduced poems into his novels to make a strong constract between the metaphysical speculation and repetitive rhythm of poems, by which the lust and decadence reflected in the latter are purified and sublimated by the former. “Aesthetic Defense” reveals the basic principle of literary creation, which has methodological implications for us to review the narrative rhetoric of Chinese literature over the past century, and also provides a more effective cognitive way for correcting literary criticism standards, opening up the spiritual world of writers and rebuilding the current literary life.

Key words: aesthetic defense, YU Dafu, function of confession, erotic ethics, introducing poem into novel