Abstract: Before the Revolution of 1911, the study of The Book of Songs always appeared in classicism, which means that before the end of the Qing dynasty, scholars paid attention to the issue of value in it. When Zhang Taiyan took The Book of Songs as history, he initiated a shift from classicism to history, marking the beginning of deconstructing the value of The Book of Songs. Since then, a new generation of scholars such as Hu Shi regarded The Book of Songs as a historical material, and its value as a Confucian classic was further deconstructed. The literary interpretation of The Book of Songs, also advocated by Hu Shi and promoted by the "Ancient History Discrimination" School, became more obsessed with treating the songs as ballads in the 1930s. The literary interpretation became established when Wen Yiduo applied Western theories to the study of The Book of Songs. The focus of study in the 1980s was "culture", but actually it stemmed from literature and eventually won the approval of literature. Looking back at the study of The Book of Songs in the past century, we can see that to completely dismantle the moral value of The Book of Songs by connecting it to history, historical materials and literature was problematic in the very beginning. However, it is neither possible nor unnecessary for the study of The Book of Songs to return to pure Confucian classicism; rather, to take literary understanding as a precondition, and partially affirming the value of traditional didacticism by poetry, might be a reasonable direction for the future study of The Book of Songs.

Key words: The Book of Songs, value as a classic, history and historical materials, collapse, reconstruction