The Literary Criticism Under The Commercial Ideology Of The 1990s

If the critics of the 1940s to 1980s were main confused by the political ideology,while The 90's critics encounter new trials never encountered,that is the great pressure the commercial ideology pressing on literature criticism.With the popularization and vulgarization of the literature in the 1990s,the critics of the time encountered dual challenges.On the one hand,the aestheticism criticism to belles-lettres has to face the crisis of aphasia.On the other hand,the center position in culture of these elitist intellectuals would collapse either.Under such cultural context,the critical discourse of the 90s has quickly become divided.Parts of these critics hold their consistent critical position,and criticize the vulgarization Of the literature of the time vehemently.Parts of them conform to the trend of the times,accept the public opinion and become the associate of the commerce.While parts of them choose to retreat to academism camp,and escape themselves from the reality.The differentiation of the critical discourse made the values of the literary criticism of the 1990s in a unprecedented disarray.These problems seem like only come form the different understanding on the literary(criticism)concept,but in fact it implied a meaning of the fight for cultural power as well.How to analysis the tumultuous literature criticism phenomenon objectively and identify the underlying meaning it would be a very significant work.The critics of the 1990s had been differentiated evidently by their occupational identity.By and large,they were divided into three types,the occupational critics attributable to the writers Association,the academic critics and the Media critics.The occupational critics pay much attention on literature dynamic of the moment,so the critical discourse of them would have strong timeliness.But they often had to obey the deployment of the local writers Association,and sometimes for the interests of the so-called local literature they had to made some exaggerated advocate for the local literary works.The academic critics are generally university scholars and professional literature researchers,they are more likely inclined to the interpretation of the classical literature and the history of literature.Even when comment the literary works or phenomenon the Now moment,there is always a distance been kept between the critics and the great mass of average readers,because they had to obey the rules of the academic discourse strictly.The Media critics often were acted by the newspaper editors or literature journalists,their comments always link up with the marketing strategy,the comment utterance are basically submit to the manipulate of the commercial ideology.So actually it is often a disguised commercial propaganda advertisement.Many of these hot issues of the literary firmament belong to commercial speculation.The historical and social literary criticism,aesthetic criticism and the cultural criticism are three relatively main streams of the critic methods in the 1990s.In fact,they always appear in the critic texts in a mixed way.In general as we talk about the features of critic talk,our opinions are usually based on the critical thoughts but not the specific methods of criticism.The aesthetic criticism mostly obeys the belles-lettres critical tradition and emphasizes the narrative technique and the aesthetic value of the literature.The cultural criticism rarely judges the aesthetic value for the target,they pay more attention on the investigation of the create process of the literary works,and intent to reveal the relationship between the text and the potential authority ideology.As though the historical and social literary criticism had declined since the 80s,it still has some performance in the 90s.This kind of comment often comes from those Marxism critics of the older generation who always using the remaining discourse of political authority to give out aggressive question about the political stand of the comment subject.It is easy to see the vulgarity and political bias from this kind of discourse.In this sense,we can distinguish critics to many groups in a cognitive level.We call some of them aesthetic critics,others cultural critics,and some of them political critics.Relatively speaking,specifically in the literary criticism mode,the occupational comments and media comments are mostly belong to impressionism criticism,this kind of criticism is rarely comes from the non-utilitarian and spontaneous impulse of the readers.Actually,all the occupational critics and media critics have to talk to the public reader and have implicit or explicit intentions to lead the interest of the readers.While the academic critics usually complete their analysis and evaluation of the target of criticism by allocating and manipulating a series of professional terms in accordance with the rule of the academic discourse.We can say on a large scale that the academic criticism is a production of the academic institution and the self-cycle of a system of knowledge.It is a new age to the 1990s with the globalization,commercialization and the technicalization,as corresponding as this,literature had been marginalized of the time.The mode of production,way of communication and even the basic function of the literature all have met with many fundamental changes.For example,the principal part of critics is not only the occupational critics from the writers Association or academic critics.The critical discourse is not the expert discourse what they on behalf of anymore as well.The influence of the market,consumer and modern public media on the produce of the literary discourse can never be underestimated.At the same time,for the sharply increase of the cultural capital of the commercial public,the contradiction between the public and elite intellectual turns increasingly obvious.The battle on cultural power inside the elite intellectual happens frequently too.All above cause the broke of the consensus about critical thoughts in the 1990s.For example,the assessment about the situation of the 90s'literary comments are diversified,such as the Crisis Theory,the Absent Theory,the Development Theory,the Transformation theory and so on.This paper means to criticize the literary criticism of the 1990s,and it is built on carding and summarizing the articles and works which published during the 1990 to 1999.With the careful analysis to the typical texts and topics of these comments,I expect myself to trace out the spirit of criticism in 1990s by fanning out from a point to an area.My paper has been divided into four chapters.The introduction is about the exposition of the pivotal concept and the research context.Chapter 1,revolves the Crisis Theory of the serious literature and the controversy over the popular fiction the Chinese woman in Manhattan.Popular best sellers bring severe anxiety to the literary critics of the 90s.In this chapter,I mainly talk about how these critics reply to it and what attitude they show.The aesthetic criticism built on elitism position and the impressionism criticism as the hack of commerce need more attention.Chapter 2 is chiefly concerned with the topic about the canonization of Jin Yong's novels.How the elite group of literature critics transfer their critical positions,how they debate on critical values.The canonization of Jin Yong's novels exposed the philistine's temperament of the 90's literary criticism,meanwhile the post-modern culture concept of relativism and pragmatism has already been invaded the literary criticism field in the 1990s.Chapter 3 includes the argument on the novel The Abandoned capital and some other related topics such as the critique of the view that good literature should suit both refined and popular tastes,the critique of the New Citizen literature,the critique of fallow literature,the critique of bourgeois literature.How to regard the relationship between the serious literature and the commercial literature,how to dispose the challenge from vulgarized historical trend,in this chapter,I try to provide various views of the 90's critics.And we find they actively had been seeking critical strategies to break through the commercial ideology.The chapter 4 revolves around the academic criticism and the cultural criticism.I have an indepth study on these two new criticism paradigms.In my research,to set up new criticism paradigms is an academic consciousness of the 90's critics after they confirmed their marginal status.There is a strong motivation for expanding their academic discourse power swarmed in their head.