From Seeking Beauty To Create

James Wood is a famous contemporary British novelist,literary critic and scholar,who mainly publishes critical articles in newspapers and periodicals,and his criticism covers many classic works and contemporary works.Due to Wood’s identity and the particularity of the readers he faces to,his literary criticism generally presents the characteristics of aestheticization and popularization.He devotes himself to the conformity with the aesthetic taste of the public readers in the goal of critical writing,and at the same time tries to make a new way of criticism on the edge of academic.James Wood’s literary view and the influence of the literary criticism he accepted are the background of his personal literary criticism.Wood believes that literature is an aesthetic experience,an art to save the flesh and blood of life from death and historical forgetting,and a freedom for people to write and imagine.The novel comes from life and gives readers a collection of daily details.At the same time,the novel problem is also a theological problem to some extent.His criticism is marked by Russian formalism criticism and French structuralism criticism.He cares about the style,form and words of the text and is deeply influenced by aestheticism criticism.On how to understand the meaning and function of literary criticism,James Wood thinks that literary criticism is naturally generated from secular aesthetic activities.He refuses hard terminology analysis,and his criticism view also has the characteristics of anti theory and the tendency to be far away from moral criticism,and tends to be close,sympathetic,compassionate and sympathetic.In Wood’s view,the significance of literary criticism is from quoting literature to self creation.It is a kind of "passionate re-description" at first,and then it becomes unconscious creation.This process is from"external literary criticism" to internal creative sublimation.The most prominent function of literary criticism is to have a dialogue,which is not only a way for critics to talk with literary works and readers,but also a way to talk with omniscient God.James Wood’s critical practice is mainly reflected in two aspects:detailed study and comparative study.On the basis of critical text,the detailed study is to make a detailed analysis of the text by means of piecemeal writing,figurative close reading,the interlaced description of the virtual and the real.The comparative study is mainly to classify the text,disassemble the elements of the novel and make a horizontal comparison,and focus on the narrative elements and thematic elements of the novel,so as to make a wide and detailed exploration of all aspects of the modern novel.The narrative elements mainly compare the religious elements in the novel,the novelists’balance of real fiction,the difference and integration of literary belief and religious belief;the thematic elements compare the secularity of modern novels and nature of comedies,religious comedy and secular comedy.James Wood is the pioneer of the post theoretical turn in the literary world.His column style criticism full of literariness and creativity has brought a new trend to the western literary criticism.Wood not only introduced a mode of literary criticism on the academic edge,but also acted as the pioneer of contemporary newspaper column criticism,constantly inspiring and urging people to think more deeply about the intrinsic value of literature and literary criticism.In addition,Wood’s attention to the mass readers also makes Chinese critics who attach great importance to macro social criticism think about how to eliminate the boundary between the academic and the public,and re-find the aesthetic origin of criticism.