An Inquiry Into The Becoming And Existing Of Literature Significance

Literature significance is the basic issue of literary theory. Also, it is an essential subject within the contemporary research. This paper takes the becoming and existing of literature significance as its basic theme, whereas becoming is the key point. To inquire such a question, it mainly resorts to the western literary theories. Presently, the utilitarian attitude towards western theories might hamper any thorough researches. Since most western theories have their philosophical foundation, this paper has adopted the poetics research combining the literary theory and philosophy.The paradigm of poetics research directly decides the demonstration structure of this paper. It contains 6 chapters: The previous 3 chapters mean to pursue the philosophical foundation of literature significance, so as to demonstrate the basic attributes of significance poetics. The next 3 chapters mean to explore the literature significance among the poetics scheme, so as to demonstrate the becoming and existing of literature significance.The philosophical foundation of literature significance lies in meaning. Therefore, Chapter 1 inquires the problem of linguistic meaning among the philosophy history systematically. In the ancient Greece, the Logos doctrine laid the foundation for the theory of meaning. Although there is a disagreement between Physis and Nomos, they are both realism. In the mid-Ages, the nominalism other than the realism took to explore the language itself. Lastly, the linguistic turn began to focus on the linguistic meaning. In this"turn", the analytic philosophy established the strict meaning philosophies, whereas Saussure found out the principle of arbitrariness of linguistic signs.The Hermeneutics among the"turn"made a major breakthrough on the issue of meaning-becoming. Therefore, Chapter 2 inspects the Greek foundation of the"becoming"thoughts, so as to explain the issue of meaning-becoming comprehensively. Despite the historical covering of"becoming"thoughts by the metaphysics tradition, the"becoming"thoughts might be found in the pre-metaphysical Greek thoughts and the post-metaphysical contemporary philosophies. In the Greek philosophy, Heraclitus and Aristotle mastered the"becoming"thoughts deeply by intuitive and logic methods respectively. In the contemporary times, Nietzsche revealed the becoming of meaning by his"metaphor"doctrine and perspectivism, which stems from his thoughts of"Eternal Return". Heidegger developed the thoughts of meaning-becoming by his Dasein Hermeneutics and the thoughts of"sage-sagen", which demonstrates the horizontalness of meaning.This paper should return from the meaning philosophies to the significance poetics. Thus, Chapter 3 analyses the multi relations between meaning and literature on the levels of category, discipline, and school of thought. Especially, the relation in discipline, i.e., the relation between various significance poetics and literature, has been debated thoroughly. By reviewing the related philosophical foundation and forecasting the literature questions, this paper has summarized three attributes of significance poetics, namely, wholeness, becoming, and horizontalness. Thus, the theme of the previous 3 chapters has been demonstrated.Next, in the perspectives of significance poetics, a scheme of significance poetics is constructed by improving the doctrine of R. Jakobson. Thus, the other 3 chapters would cover 3 aspects, i.e., the intention of authors, the interpretation by readers, and the textual-levels of literature works.The ideas of"author's death"are very common in contemporary theories. The semiotics and the Heidegger thoughts both deconstructed the idea of"author". However, the pursuit of wholeness in this paper leads to an objection of such views. Therefore, Chapter 4 re-constructs the deconstructed"author". On the issue of author's intention, it reveals the changing from empirical intention to textual intention among contemporary academics. Besides, it analyses the"changing"on the background of the linguistic turn. It also analyses how the"becoming"helps the empirical author to generate the textual author and textual reader. Thus, the problem of author's intention has been explored.The ideas of author's death might help highlight the becoming of significance in literature reception, but it might be over-done. Therefore, Chapter 5 first proposes the author-reader's non-symmetry. The idea of non-symmetry can help to overcome the improper ideas of"author-decides-the meaning"or"author-dies". Furthermore, this paper considers the possible conformation of various readers. Subsequently, the meaning interpretation is demonstrated externally and internally. Externally, the wholly becoming of emotion and meaning is verified, while the dual separation of emotion/ significance is overcome. Internally, the problem of"interpretation"is demonstrated by 3 steps, i.e., the inquiry of premise, the case study, and the extending research. The philosophy, poetics thoughts, and poetry analysis by Heidegger are discriminated strictly, so that the idea that literature interpretation should open to various theories and the reality is revealed. Thus, the problem of literature interpretation has been explored in poetics.The literature significance starts in the semantic issue, but it is not limited at the beginning point. Therefore, Chapter 6 focuses on the textual-level theories in cotemporary western theories. Among them, the empiricism esthetics has manifested"the material→eidos"principle. The representation/ expression, which are regarded as the significances of artistic works, have been developed by the analytic esthetics in many aspects. H. Blocker made remarkable progress on the issue, i.e., he developed a familiar idea to the Nietzsche theory in the artistic philosophy. Similarly, Phenomenology esthetics obtained great achievements in the representation/ expression theories as well. By debating the related theories, this paper has completed the verification of the becoming-existing of literature significance on the dimension of literature text.