"Theory Traveling"--The Sinicization Of The New Criticism

The New Criticism has ever exerted most important influence upon the development of literature criticism, literature writing and literature education of China since it first traveled to China in the late 1920s. However, it was sinicized fastly and changed Chinese literature little. In this paper, the New Criticism is investigated under the context of Chinese modern literary criticism.The internal agent of the New Criticism sinicization is deeply analyzed. The learning paths of New Criticism sinicization and its plenty or stereoscopic feeling in the perspective of history are systematically sorted. Meanwhile, on the view of influence of the New Criticism upon Chinese literature criticism, some new situations and questions which happened in the processing of acceptance of the New Criticism are described, the value and significance of New Criticism sinicization on the reconstruction of theoretical paradigms in Chinese modern literature criticism are revealed.In the first paragraph, the development motivation of the New Criticism sinicization is discussed. The homogeneity of the New Criticism and Chinese classical literary theory which includes the similarity of the literary concepts, semantic concepts, rhetoric concepts and critical methods is the underlying causes.The spreading paths of the New Criticism sinicization are inspected in the second paragraph. The New criticism traveled in China through three paths. The first path is the process which the thought of I. A. Richards and William Empson propagated in China. The mistranslation of the translation angle is the second path. The third path is the research which means the reinterpretation of the New Criticism under Chinese context.In the third paragraph, the learning influence of New Criticism sinicization is studied. The influence of New Criticism sinicization upon Chinese modern literature criticism mainly reflects in the literature conception, writing and education. The spreading of the New Criticism sinicization awakened the consciousness of language awareness which ranges from the carrier theory to ontology of language in literary concepts. It also realized innovation which occurred from imitation of expressions to reconstruction of poetry in literary writing, and the conversion of methods from conception education to practice studying in literary education.The misreading of the New Criticism sinicization is analyzed in the forth paragraph. It exists in literary concepts and specific category, and establishes the transcendent interpretation on the comprehension. The base point analyzed in this paragraph is the main misreading of the New Criticism represent in four concepts, such as, "internal studies" and "external studies", "intentional fallacy" and "affective fallacy", "irony" and "close reading".In the last paragraph, the theoretical construction of the New Criticism sinicization is explored. A set of sinicization theoretical modality constructed in theoretical paradigms, concepts and methods during its dissemination process is specially investigated. This is the theoretical result of the New Criticism sinicization. The construction of critical paradigms of Chinese modern literary which caused by the New Criticism sinicization includes two levels. The one is the modern transformation of Chinese classical literary theory, and the other is the construction of Chinese modern poetry theory.Despite New Criticism has declined as a school of criticism, its thought on western literary theory and Chinese modern literary criticism still has far-reaching effects. Today, in the late of theory times, the studying of the sinicization of the New Criticism can rectify the misreading and envisage the positive function of New Criticism. It will conducive to the consummating of modern literary criticism, writing and education. Concurrently, it also provides some references to the formation of new concepts and paradigms of Chinese modern literary criticism.