Multi-dimensional Feminist Literary Criticism

Guided by Marxism and the theory of comparative poetics , this Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the studies of alien culture. It synthesizes the theories and methods of Marxist criticism, reader-response criticism, post-colonial criticism, deconstruction, hermeneutics, science of communication, the New Historicism and so on , makes use of a large quantity of first-hand material, and adopts the comparative methods from sthe cross-discipline and multi-level angle. Then it interprets systematically and completely feminist literary criticism's background, ethical concerns, realistic significance and spirit of poetics from the point of views of cultural level and poetic context.This Ph.D. dissertation discusses them mainly from three aspects: the source of the theory, the retrospect of the theory, the construction of the theory and its expectation. It analyzes the developing conditions of western feminism and the different characteristics of feminist literary criticism of the world, and makes some researches into the complicated entanglements between the feminist criticism and the different contemporary critical theories, the question about how to get along wellwith western feminist criticism for Chinese people, and the influence which aroused in contemporary literary criticism in China. Furthermore, the dissertation points out that the Chinese feminist literary criticism concerns the development of the world feminist criticism and literary theories, and displays the inner links between gender question and national culture so as to avoid following it blindly in the process of introducing and using western feminist literary criticism. It cherishes a hope that this can be a good method to make compensation for the defects in clarifying the system of feminist literary criticism in our country. So the dissertation interprets and discusses them from the intercultural aspects and hopes it can develop the bisexual culture healthily. This is of theoretical and realistic significance. Two innovations are as follows: one is the translation and manipulation of the source text to clarify and compare the pre-feminism theory systematically and scientifically, the other is the initial presentation of some new point of views.This Ph. D. dissertation consists of four parts:In the first part (including the preface, Chapterl and Chapter2), the research objects, methods, values and realistic significance are described and the historical circumstance of women's survival and the reasons for the emergence of feminist ideological trend are discussed. Then it also clarifies the values held by male-centricism that the feminism of the world is criticizing, and presents its disciplinary traits, respecting eachother and seeking equality in discourse or the spirit of the poetics, and holds the views on its equal principle of accepting as well as rejecting Marxism, psychoanalytic theory, reader-response criticism and deconstruction, etc. In addition, the Ph.D. dissertation points out that feminism has played an active role in transforming literary criticism theory from formalist mode to a comprehensive cultural critical mode. It opposes such views as 'no theories at all' or 'lack of reasons' about feminist criticism. Similarly, it points out some weak-points of the criticism.In the second part (Chapters), the Ph.D. dissertation examines the shifts in the modern feminist ideology current in the context of China in the process of transforming from tradition to modernity, and exhibits primary importance of women's liberation issue in the process of Chinese modernization, which has been discussed since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. And the characteristics and significance about Chinese men's acting as an 'agent of female in discourse' in the field of feminist literary criticism, the gender consciousness of modern women writers and the consciousness of gender equality all become constituent parts of our modern culture and contemporary literature as well as important theoretical resources of feminist literary criticism in a new era; moreov...