An Approach To Imagine Literary History

David Der-wei Wang, as a famous Chinese modern and contemporary literature researcher overseas, he has contributed a lot to both theoretical and criticism. Of particular note, “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept accounts for an important proportion. Hence this thesis, attempts to analyze and study it in a comprehensive way. There are seven chapters totally.Chapter One is introduction and can be divided into four parts. Firstly, it identifies “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept and summarizes its characteristics, namely they are openness and diverse; Secondly, the next part is literature review, which analyzes the current research situation of “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept. Thirdly, it generalizes the research meaning and based on this, putting forwards innovations made in this thesis. Finally, it includes the research methods.Chapter Two mainly clarifies the concept of “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept, demonstrating reasonability and rationality of it. From the literary review of relevant books and journals diachronically, the author summarizes this concept. On the basis of previous theoretical outcomes, David Der-wei Wang is the pioneer who explains and analyzes “lyrical tradition” both from time and space perspectives. “Lyrical tradition” described by him serves not only as diverse of eastern traditional lyrical and the main lyric object of the literature of western Romanticism. By doing this, “lyrical tradition” is developed into a comprehensive concept, which contains all-round contents both in China and overseas. Furthermore, being a criticism concept previously, “lyrical tradition” is promoted to literary history, which provides a new dimension except for enlightenment and revolution to retrospect Chinese modern and contemporary literature.Chapter three manifests the theoretical background of “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept through collecting and classifying relevant theoretical background. It includes two parts. Firstly, the author clarifies “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept based on three theoretical origins, namely they are Chinese traditional poetic system, Chinese modern literary criticism discourse and creative proposals and innovations made by overseas scholars. Next, the author discusses how David Der-wei Wang makes innovations and breakthroughs in order to enrich and enlarge traditional lyrical based on comparative literature discourse.Chapter Four is about the development the concept “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept. Although “lyrical tradition” has its own academic development and history, “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept gains its development gradually. It contains two parts. Because “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept is existed as one dimension of “Chinese modernity”, hence the first part is the comparison between the concepts of “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept and “Chinese modernity”. By doing this, with their mutual development, the preposition concepts such as “tradition”, “modern”, “lyrical” could be re-defined and turns into three academic forms of “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept. The second part is mainly about the deepening and intensifying of relevant concepts and objects after diachronically evolution, which aims to present how David David Der-wei Wang promotes “lyrical tradition” from literature genre to cultural code through combining its Chinese and western connotation. Hence, “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept is provided with varied features.Chapter Five and Chapter Six are important as well as difficulty.Chapter Five generalizes and summarizes multi dimensional critical practices made by David Der-wei Wang, which are guided by “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept. With the respective “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept, it could be used to review classical literary works, to make up the blank in literature writing and to innovate on comparison and contrast, so as to enrich the researching objectives. “Lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept, serving as a judging standards, provides researchers with a new method to observe literary history except for realism so as to ensure the diversity of judging system. Besides, as a literary history concept enables David Der-wei Wang, to enjoy more free to write, and therefore, literary history could be presented in a total different way.Chapter Six summarizes significance and limitations of “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept. When it comes to significance, on one hand, it includes two layers: “Lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept breaks the invisible barriers between different disciplines, main land and Taiwan and China and overseas, which has significant influence on the rewriting of literary history; On the other hand, “lyrical tradition”, serving as literary history, could provide paradigm value for researching contemporary literary history. As for the limitations, it mainly discusses over explaining of materials and confusion of definitions made by David Der-wei Wang,.Chapter Seven is conclusion. The author summarizes the previous analysis and puts forward that it is essential for scholars and researchers to keep an objective attitude towards “lyrical tradition” as a literary history concept.