On The Writing Of History Of English Literature In Mainland China

The thesis aims to explore the development of English literary history writing in Mainland China. How it has changed? How does it differentiate from the writing in western countries, especially in its homeland, Britain? What attributes these differences? What are the characteristics? The thesis explores the development of the writing from literary concept, historical viewpoint of literature, writing modes of literary history and construction of literary canon, with literature-related concept and theory. The last chapter uses case study of four writings in different period of China to illustrate the above idea.Besides introduction and conclusion, there are five chapters.The introduction part briefly shows the disciplinary background of English literary history writing in China, the development of its writing, current study, writing goals, and line of thinking.The first chapter discusses the writing of English literary history from the concept of literature, aiming to find out how the different concept influences the writer choosing literature material. In order to show the characteristics of Chinese writing, the thesis compares them with several western writings. The pure literature concept comes from the west, which influences Chinese people greatly, and has a far higher proportion in all the domestic English literary history writings, which considers literary genres:poetry, fiction, drama and prose. Pan-literary concept thinks literature includes history, philosophy, diaries, letters, mottos, and pamphlets, etc. The influence of comprehensive literary concept, emerging from post-theory, mainly shows the sub-genres, such as woman literature, region literature, minority literature and pop literature coming into literature, while cross-disciplinary writing has not yet appeared.The second chapter discusses the domestic writing of English literary history from historical viewpoint of literature and divides it into two periods, that is, evolutionary viewpoint of literature in Republic of China and Marxist material viewpoint after People’s Republic of China. This two viewpoints are aiming to change china’s backwardness and get into prosperity, so when they came into China, they changed its meaning in some degree. Evolutionary viewpoint applied into history writing stresses the relationship of literature and Nationality, to enlighten the people and improve people’s characteristics. Marxist material viewpoint once was changed into a class theory which classified every work using class theory. In new era, Marxist material viewpoint stresses the social and political background, author’s life and career, work’s content, sometimes plus the work’s artistic features. The last part put forward a new historical viewpoint of literature—human nature, to connect all the literary events, in order to change the monotonous historical viewpoint in domestic English literary history writing.The third chapter discusses the dividing period and writing modes in writing English literary history and compares the domestic writing with western writing, to find out its similarities and differences. In dividing period, Chinese likes using hybrid, that is, dynasty+ century+ literary trend. In writing modes, influenced by traditional history writing, biographical modes is the most popular one, classification-combination mode the next, commenting and dictionary mode rare. The second part puts forward two kinds of dividing period, one literary trend, the other literary communication; two writing modes, one chronological mode, the other story style.The fourth chapter discusses the changes of English literary canon and the tradition’s influences on canon from canonical construction of literary history writing. It shows that the canon construction is gradually a Chinalization process, influenced by history, reality, culture and ideology. It is quite different from British literary history in choosing canon, commenting canon authors and interpreting canonical works.The fifth chapter chooses four case studies in different period to illustrate the above point, hoping to show how it changes and develops in one century’s time.The conclusion part draws conclusion that Chinese writing of English literary history is both influenced by Chinese tradition and current situation, absorbing western idea and concept. It is the product of Chinese tradition and reality, east and west, finally forming its own characteristics.