The Discourse Transformation Of Foreign Literature Studies

This dissertation is a general retrospection and reflection about the academic process of foreign literature studies in China since1978. By saying "general", it means that this dissertation has two orientations. One is that, instead of examining the research history of different nationalities and languages, it deals with the academic process of "foreign literature" as a whole. The other is that it steps into this period of academic history from a macroscopical perspective, with a view not to summarizing the academic gains and losses from all aspects, but to clearly presenting the problem consciousness and the change of discourse patterns about foreign literature studies in this period.The dissertation chooses to focus on a period within a hundred-year-old study of foreign literature in China, that is, the period from1978to2010. Under the context of Chinese historical and cultural transitions, it mainly covers the five authorative, comprehensive and professional academic journals:Foreign Literature Studies, Foreign Literature Review, Foreign Literature, Foreign Literatures, Contemporary Foreign Literature. Though touching upon theory studies, research models on writers and works, and the change of heated discourses in these journals, this dissertation manages to outline the transformational process of academic discourses about foreign literature studies, reveals its complexities, varieties and conflicts, and discusses the construction of order in foreign literature at different stages as well as the importance of discourse transformation in academic history.It is this dissertation’s belief that foreign literature studies belong to discourse construction and discourse practice activities, and the academic reflections on foreign literature studies should fully use for reference the perspective of discourse analysis and the approach to the archaeology of knowledge. Consequently, while this dissertation unfolds its discussions within the frame of academic history and regards rearrangement of history as its main subject, it also contains such in-depth discussions when necessary as restoring some heated discourse issues to their larger historical and cultural contexts. Combined with the emergence and the operating process of these discourses in historical contexts, these discussions examine the uniqueness of related discourse practice in this field, and thus ponder over the constructing function of foreign literature studies on Chinese culture subject.The body of the dissertation is made up of four chapters. Chapter One briefly outlines "pre-history", which describes the changing process of discourse patterns in foreign literature studies from May Fourth to1978. This chapter holds that from late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China different groups of intellectuals, by laying respective emphasis on translation and introduction of foreign literature, constructed together a symbiotic discourse with multiple voices in foreign literature, and this provided a reference for the reconstruction of Chinese culture. From1950s to1970s, within a discourse system exclusively dominated by class struggle, a new order in foreign literature with distinct ideological characteristics was established in academia.Chapter Two mainly talks about the reconstructive and transformational process of foreign literary discourse in the1980s, with the year of1985as a division. After conflict and compromise, humanistic and modern discourses took the place of the17years’discourse tradition as the main discourse in foreign literature studies. In the late1980s, a new order in foreign literature was basically formed with an emphasis on the19th and20th western literature and western contemporary theory discourse. Despite the fact that the discourse pattern of class analysis had died out, social and historical criticism was still the main model of foreign literature studies. While the call for form aesthetics was heavy, Aesthetic criticism did not yet form the scale.Chapter Three takes a look at the process strongly and prominently dominated by the Western discourses and the questionings expressed by the academia about the phenomenon. By comparing the differences and similarities between the introduction of theories and the study perspectives of authors and works in the1980s and the1990s, this chapter reveals the increasing influence of contemporary Western theories on the research models in foreign literature, and analyses the discipline predicament and the problem consciousness reflected by three significant disputes, that is,"the issue of colonial literature","globalization and nationalization" and "theory".Chapter Four describes the pluralism of research models in foreign literature since the21st century and summarizes the influences of theory retreat and cultural turn on foreign literature studies as well as their manifestation in criticism practice. By means of case criticisms, this chapter analyses in detail the transformational process of discourse about foreign literature studies, Finally, it reviews the value of some discourse constructions and the problems existing in the constructing process.