Literary Criticism In The Vision Of Post-Colonialism

Above all, this thesis introduces briefly the influence which is accepted by Said, his critical style and critical subject, and then, it also points out that although he is famous for cultural criticism, his critical subject is achieved through literary criticism as a basis.The main body consists of three parts that discuss how Said presents cultural vision with literary criticism.In the first part, I discuss three achievements of Said's criticism for"Orientalism". Said was not the first scholar who began to criticize the traditional Orientalism but he was the most successful. His work was so original that it established the post-colonial criticism. There are three aspects reflecting his originality:Firstly, he applies Foucault's discourse theory to reveal the power performing system which is implied in the traditional Orientalism studies. Through the analysis to the traditional Orientalism discourse, Said finds that there is often an essence predetermined by traditional Orientalism that produces isolation and opposition between the Orient and the Occident. On the contrary, Said thinks that cultures which can't have any essence are both miscellaneous and impure. According to this point of view, he analyzes how the Orient is distorted and points out that this process implies some power performance.Secondly, a new dimension—literary criticism—is added by Said to the stereotyped analysis of academy and history, to some extent, it develops and practises the first. When Said analyzes the power performing system of Orientalism discourse, he synthesizes many subjects: history, philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism etc, because the formerly scholars neglect literary criticism universally, as soon as it comes into Orientalism studies, it is paid attention intensely. Said investigates carefully the European literature from the ancient Greek to the modern, he finds that literature, as an important way of accumulating knowledge, also involves the history process of the traditional Orientalism imagining the Orient.Thirdly, Said contributes to provide a new way of history study. From the 19th to the middle of 20th, the history conception of evolution formulating...