A Study On Hu Yinglin's Literary Thoughts

The literary thoughts, as an important composition of Hu Yinglin's academicthoughts, ranges broadly from novel theory, poetics to opera theory. All these theories arenot only self-sufficient but also innovative both in academic thoughts and methodology.His novel theory involves the function, style, classification, history of novel, popularnovel studies and novelistic literature cataloging and studies, and thus is of greatimportance, establishes the academic rules for those successors in this field. Being avaluable model in writing and composition of the academic monographs, his poeticscovers four aspects of historical facts studies, theoretical summaries, criticism andappreciation, and poetry instructions. His opera theory specially pays much attention onthe characteristics of stage performance, studies its development and evolvement on thebasis of opera's origin, performance, and role playing. Throwing away the traditionalprejudice, Hu Yinglin studied literature with an end of pure academic pursuit, andshowed us the great academic courage, the theoretical criticism consciousness, and theobjective criticism attitude as well. Hu's literary theory is of rather solid systemizationand logic. He dialectically inherits from the tradition and self-consciously brings forthnew ideas, examines the literary development and transformation with a dynamicconsideration. Therefore, Hu's literary theory makes itself a model for the successors intheoretical system construction, theoretical thoughts, and research methods. Of course,all of his thoughts is the mutual fruit from his family academic tradition, books collection,literature cataloging, historical studies, Buddhism studies, and lots of traveling andfriends-making activities, and the social cultural thoughts of that time as well.