Reviews And Rethinks On The Literary Criticism In The New Period

This paper reviews and rethinks literary criticism in the new period based on thestatus and theory of Chinese literary criticism since the reform and opening up in early1980s. In1980s, the concept of “literature is humanology” revived; literary criticismstarted to pay attention to the internal law and noumenon property of literature; literarycriticism finally broke the long-term suppression of political utility and providedtheoretical support for literature to seek its own character. Problems such as“Methodology heat” and “Subjectivity” suddenly became criticism hotpot andliterature headed towards the path of aesthetic regression. In1990s, with the transitionof socialist market economic system, criticism headed towards the path ofcommercialization. This caused dual loss of criticism value and subject spirit. Enteringthe new century, literary criticism realized comprehensive innovation and developmentfaced with three major tides-globalization, consumption culture and mass culture. It’sworth noting that the prosperity of network medium made the status of media criticismprominent. However, in the circle of criticism, theorists started introspection, thoughtabout the discourse transition of Chinese literary criticism and attempted to finddevelopment theories of literary criticism with Chinese characteristics in the newcentury.Therefore, this paper conducts a dynamic rather than static, open rather than closeresearch with the combination of macroscopic and microscopic views on the realisticcontext,“problematic consciousness” and function of literary criticism and currentcriteria for criticism through the review on the phenomena and theoretical developmentof Chinese literary criticism over30years in the new period; deeply combines with thelaw and trend of Chinese literary theory in theprocess of localization and nationalization; meanwhile seeks the theoreticalgrowing point of literary criticism in these “problematic”“cracks” through carefulstudy on individual cases of dispute focus of the theory, puts forward some newtheoretical topics and rethinks and elaborates what contemporary literary criticism isand how we should conduct literary criticism.The main body of this paper is divided into five parts-chapter1: Introduction which mainly includes discussions on the origin of topic, research status, researchobjectives, main content, research method, significance and innovation point.Chapter2: Context development of literary criticism in the new period. Thischapter starts from the existing way of literary criticism, with “contextualism” ofRichards in the new criticism as the base point. It explores the development course ofcriticism phenomena over30years through organization from historical dimensionbased on context change of literary criticism in the new period. This chapter is dividedinto two parts. Part one explores the connotation of criticism context from thetheoretical perspective and part two discusses the context development of literarycriticism over30years.Chapter3: Problematic implementation of literary criticism in the new period. Itdescribes the fact that literary criticism is always conducted based on focus dispute anddetermines the symbolic status of development of literary criticism in the new period.This chapter mainly explicates problematic consciousness of literary criticism frompositive and negative perspectives; takes focus dispute caused by the existence contextof Chinese literary criticism discourse since1980s for examples from the positiveperspective; and elaborates that the inadequate criticism of reality for literary criticismis due to the intervention of the lack of problematic consciousness from the negativeperspective.Chapter4: Function practice of literary criticism in the new period. This chaptermainly discusses the practice of interpretation function of literary criticism since thenew period. Part one discriminates and elaborates several functions of literary criticismand provides theoretical preparations for the practice of functions of literary criticismin the new period. Part two explicates the formation morphology of functions ofliterary criticism in the new period. This part mainly elaborates two issues-blankingof legislative status and highlight of interpretation function. Part three describes thecrisis and revolution of criticism discourse in the new period and attempts to explainthe pursuit of intrinsic value of criticism.Chapter5: Exploration of diversification of criticism standard in the new period.This chapter is divided into three parts, in the first part, it explored the diverseconcepts of the new literary criticism and made a theoretical preparation to the exploration of diversification of criticism standard in the new period. In part two, thearticle reviewed a wide rage of criticism landscape. In the last part, it reflected a widerange of issues of standards of literary criticism and analyzed the multiplicity andopenness of contemporary literary criticism.In a word, this paper has the following research values through the review onphenomena of literary criticism and reflection on its theory. First, it examines the mainexisting form of literary criticism from different historical perspectives, then thinksabout the reasonable existing form of context and thus discusses the basic relationshipbetween the research on existing problems of literary criticism and contemporaryliterary theories. Second, it reviews several important problems in the developmentprocess of literary criticism in the new period and puts forward its reflection onproblematic research; reaches the root of dilemma of literary criticism, makes the cruxof problems clear and highlights the importance of problematic consciousness throughthe exploration on problematic consciousness of literary criticism; andcomprehensively demonstrates the importance and practical significance ofproblematic consciousness, starting from the relationship between literary research andtext problem. Third, it elaborates the function of criticism and value pursuit to showthe revolution of functions of literary criticism in the new period and thus highlightsthe generative implementation of criticism discourse in historical selection andtransformation and the internal value measurement pursuit of criticism subject. Finally,it elaborates the function of criticism and value pursuit to show the revolution offunctions of literary criticism in the new period and thus highlights theoretical thinkingon problems such as the generative implementation of criticism discourse in historicalselection and transformation and the internal value measurement pursuit of criticismsubject.