Abstract: The image of “surplus people”,which belongs to decadent literary image,is pervasive in Yu Dafus novels.What it shows to us is that in the process of modern Chinese ethics reform,modern individuals have walked out from the traditional moral structure and cultural paradigm,and gone through the difficult psychological process of finding and constructing themselves.At the same time,Yu Dafus sexual description and sexual desire discourse,as a part of the far-reaching value paradigm transformation of modern Chinese ethics,participate in the reconstruction of self,ethnic group and modern ethics.This is a Freudian “anxiety of influence” that records the aesthetic resistance of modern individuals to traditional ethics.In a sense,the decadent writing of Yu Dafus novels is a significant literary event in the transformation of modern Chinese sentimental ethics,providing a kind of legitimacy for the existence of modern perceptual self,a new subject model.

Key words: Yu Dafu, decadent writing, sentimental ethics