Institutionalized Literariness

"Literariness" has been more widely used in recent years. Although some theorists have studied the concept of literariness and stated their opinions about it, they used it as an established criterion of value in all kinds of literature or culture field. In the process of using "literariness", the original meaning of the concept has been covered intentionally or without intention, that is, why literature is literature? What is literature? What's the nature of literature? Users don't care to further discuss of these questions. So, literariness has became a floating "signifier" and could not answer questions when Chinese literature merchandized and marginalized today. Perhaps we can analyze the contradiction between knowledge and power, person and society, freedom and rule, and so on by textbooks of literature theory which is a steady carrier of elements, category, judge criterion of literature, then, we can provide an angle of re-thought about literature and literature theory today.Therefore, this paper doesn't intend to provide a new concept of "literariness" and demonstrate it, but we take it as a consult that we review evolvement of literature opinion. We can describe that Chinese modern literature and theory tried to walk out the plight with the answers of "what is literature" in textbooks of literature theory, relating to culture movement, assn and organizing, literature publishing, subject establishing, course setting, nation policy in about a century, and so on..This paper tries to partition these textbooks by history context and different answers about literariness, that is, Chapter 1Literariness under the discourse of new-vernacular literature (1920-1940) Sensibility of literature: new Culture movement, Japan literature theory, identity of writerChapter 2Literariness under the discourse of politics (1940-1977)Ideology of literature: revolution, Marxism, political environments...