Secondary Power Discourse: On The Form Of Chinese Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism And Features

Feminist literary criticism used to be a genre which is the most isolated and the least understood. But, in the past 20 years in China, we have got nearly one hundred books and more than two thousands article which can called feminist literary criticism.In this essay, therefore, I would like to outline a brief taxonomy, of Chinese feminist literary criticism, in hope that it will help this criticism to find out it's special location in the field of Chinese criticism.Feminist literary criticism of China can be divided into four distinct varieties. The first type is Women's Image Criticism, which is concernedwith woman as reader-------with woman as the consumer ofmale-produced literature, and with the way in which the hypothesis of a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awaking us to the significance of its sexual codes.The second type is concerned with woman as writer------with womanas the producer of textual meaning, with the language, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women. In this essay, it's called Women's Aesthetics Criticism.The Women's Literary History is the third type which also concerns with woman as writer, but for it's special meaning to the feminist literary criticism of China, I should like to make it as a single variety.The final type is Feminist Literary Theory. The program of this type is to construct a female theory for the analysis of literature, to develop a new model which can explain the world renewedly, rather than to adapt male models or theories.In the end, this essay will also conclude the most important characteristic of the feminist literary criticism in China: The exist of the gender view, the use of the image, the prosperity of analysis and the fewness of the theory writings.