Sphinx Of Our Literature

From suffering the cold shoulder at the beginning of publishment to being regardedas one of the greatest novels afterwards, Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights hasgone through the review course as peculiarly as the novel itself. In more than onehundred sixty years, almost all the critical theories have interest in this novel. Thereupon, the commentarial history of Wuthering Heights has gathered athought—provoking scene.The commentarial history of the novel Wuthering Heights has given us “reliance”so as to look closely at the development of literature theories for more than a hundredyears by means of a works, as well as the interactive relationship between the versionand the literature theories. Therefore, this thesis based on the reviews by the westernscholars, depending on time and the course of the development of literature theories as abackground to sort out examining the meaning explained under the background of everykind of literature theories according to a macroscopic angle of view.The first chapter is the reviews of commentary on the novel Wuthering Heights. Atthat time, the reviews took the traditional critical way as the dominant factor.Impressionistic Criticism and External Criticism were the main stream at this moment.The artistic glamour of the novel Wuthering Heights underwent the process from beingmisunderstood to being discovered in the19thcentury.The second chapter is the reviews of the commentary on the novel WutheringHeights in the first half of the20thcentury. At the moment, the review means was theprocess gradually from external to internal of the version. Modernism gradually took theplace of the traditional critical theories. Psychoanalytic Criticism, Feminist Criticism,Western Marxist Criticism and Archetypal Criticism have become the understandingtools by critics. The New Criticism has permeated the commentary on the novelWuthering Heights regardless of the theme of commentary, the characters or thestructure. The critics begin to analyze from artistic perspectives taking the version as thesupport. In this stage, the novel has changed from being as much defamed as praised at the beginning of the20thcentury to one of the greatest novels in critics’eyes.The third chapter is the reviews of the commentary on the novel by four theories inthe second half of the20thcentury. The four theories are separately Western MarxistCriticism, Feminist Criticism, Structuralist Narratology and Deconstructive Criticism.The reviews of this phase takes on an enriched patterns, Structuralism andDeconstructive Criticism adding to a new way to understand literate works, thecommentary on the novel Wuthering Heights by Feminist Criticism and Western MarxistCriticism gains a new development.By means of the vertical sorting out above three chapters, in the concludingremarks, to begin with, draws a longitudinal conclusion of the commentarial history onWuthering Heights, then explores the reason why the novel wins critics’ focus for a longtime and the deep thinking on the theories of literature criticism which the commentarialhistory has brought.