Research Of Literary Criticism Transformation In 1990s

The economic and political reform which started at the beginning of 1990's has brought world-shaking changes to the mainland. As the development of economic, people's physical and spiritual life has changed meanwhile. The cultural ideology and value judgment of intellectuals as well as their social status and ways to intervene the social life have also changed, which influenced intellectual's attitudes towards and reflection on literature, culture and society. Although the changes have different appearances in different disciplines, most academicians employ 'transformation' to describe the phenomena. This word even becomes the general conclusion of this historical period. Literary study has also quoted term to express the new situation in 1990's. When we put transformation between the new and old paradigm of literary criticism, we can understand the reason, traits and tendency of changes of literary criticism in dl990's.The thesis includes four parts. The Preface defines the two concepts in the paper: literary criticism and 1990's. Literary criticism refers to literary texts about the literary and cultural phenomenon in this period, which includes critical cases and theories. Here, 1990's has double meanings, which refers to not only the historical period, but also culture transformation at the end of 20th Century.Chapter One tries to give definition to the two terms-paradigm and transformation under the background of literary criticism. Transformation is not only the synonym of 'transfer' and 'change' but also has its own theoretical denotation. Transformation is employed to describe the transition between the old and the new paradigm. Paradigm is the system of multi-levels, which allows to classify the paradigm of literary criticism to four types. This classification can help to further analyze the transformation of literary criticism.Chapter Two focuses on the two reasons of paradigm transformation. One reason is disorder of literature, which means that the change of external world of literature has destroyed the internal order of literature. The other is that the new development of literature and literary criticism caused the failure of old paradigm and expected the new one.Chapter Three discusses the general characteristics, the nuclear problem and the specific presentation of paradigm transformation. Generally, the transformation in 1990's has not finished yet;the setup of the new paradigm must face the following nuclear problems: the new approach to explain China;the choice between literary criticism and literary critique. This chapter also studies individual cases from the approach of concept paradigm, method paradigm, etc..The conclusion of this thesis claims that the key of this problem is not where literary criticism goes, but literary criticism will develop as transformation happens. Since the transformation of literary criticism has not finished in 1990's, the construction of the new paradigm is still on the way. Currently we need to consider the following questions: literary criticism should adapt to the economic and political situation but keep its independence;the new paradigm should base on the effective explanation of local literature.