A Study On The Theory Of Modern Essays

By excavating the original materials, the paper makes a comprehensive, systematical, dynamic and empirical study on the theory of modern essays on the basis of the comparison between the Chinese and foreign essays of the present and the past, summarizing its features and principles of development and changes, refining its values and providing a guideline for the construction of the theories of the contemporary essays.The theory of the modern essay makes a distinction between the concept of essay and the concept of prose, jotting and sketch, and a distinction between the categories of self, inspiration, conversation, leisure and humor. It approaches the form and content systematically including the characteristics of topic, subject matter, style, language, tone, the organization of the ideas, as well as the function and value. According the theory an essay is characterized by a personal tone and free style. It is short and pithy, embodying the magnificence into the smallness, light and casual in tone, cordial and kind in presentation, making a fuss over a trifling matter but not without reasoning and expressing aspiration and emotion, criticizing and satirizing, amusing and entertaining. Meanwhile an essay boasts the ideological feature of anti-orthodox and anti-mainstream, emphasizing the "expression of aspirations" and "defying the conventional values" with a function a salvation. But it goes to another extreme in terms of dissolution of noble strictness and stereotypic discipline of literature. The theory of modern essay has absorbed the variety of the theoretical resources of the essays and other formats of literature of the world so as to build up its own theoretical system, but during this process it sometimes shows its "partiality" and "indigestion". Nevertheless, it is a supplement to the theories of modern prose and other literary forms and it also contributes to the history of ideology and culture. Controversial and oversighted as it is, it enjoys a value that cannot be substituted by any other theories of literature.