Research On Evaluation Orientation Of Contemporary Literary Criticism

In the literary context of globalization, modernization and diversification, now literary criticism is getting more opportunities of developing, as well facing some new challenges. On one hand, modern western literary current swarms into China, various genres and theoretical models of western criticism leads to various value orientations; on the other hand, the waves of market economy push the literature becoming more market-oriented, popular and consumerized, and the literary criticism is also presenting some orientations of commercialization and vulgarization. Facing the rough-and-tumble situations, literary criticism has lost its courage to criticize, and even lost its judgment and credibility. Its root cause is that the modern literary criticism is short of the leading of core value and the criterion of literature evaluation standard, which makes criticism come into the chaos of orientations.On the basis of the needs of reality and the times, this paper takes the value orientation of criticism and the system of criticism as the objects. The main part of the paper primarily carried out our concrete discussions in six parts. The first is to introduce the theoretical basis of comments of literary criticism. From the basis of the researches on the evaluative orientations of literary criticism, here elucidated the intension and extension of concepts, such as value and literary value, evaluation and literary evaluation, value orientation and evaluative orientation, and the like which connected with literary evaluation, so to clearly know their theoretical connotations, outer and inner connections, thus it could make a solid and better theoretical basis and provide necessary theoretical supports for this paper. The second is the introduction of elements formed the evaluative orientations of literary criticism. Here has selected some evaluative orientations which were stressed and approved all times, such as the orientations that named as "the truth, the good and the beautiful", that "historic, ideology and aesthetic unified", that "the idea of history and aesthetic unified", and that the one named as "the popularity of literature". The third is the functions and effects of evaluative orientations of criticism. As an evaluation mechanism, literary criticism could prompt the development of literature, its orientation would not only guide the creation of authors and lead the reception and reading of readers, but also it could have some purification on the society. The forth is the development situation, the problems and the developmental trend on evaluative orientation of the literary criticism. This paper proposes that literary criticism has some problems, such as weakness and impotence, "aphasia" and "absence", saying to oneself, "lavished praising" and "bludgeoning", and so on. While on the basis of this age, the evaluative orientations gradually get into chaos, and lost into the various values. The extreme commercialize orientations of literary criticism leads to its evaluative orientations getting more and more far away from the affinity to the people. The distortion of value standard even leads to the evaluative orientations deviating the standard of "true, good and beautiful". If we want to build the better evaluative orientation, we must continue to insist "er-wei" and "double hundred" policy, and on the basis of nuclear orientation, we also need to insist various orientations and its critical spirit, try to improve the effectiveness of literary criticism, importantly, we should take literary criticism as "a friend who will give forthright admoniton". Literary criticism should has some instances with literature, and on the basis of the persistence of its independence, to stress its criticalness, transcendence and guiding. The fifth is the mentalities and ways of building the nuclear value system. The building of the system should take the literary criticism as the core of the system, while expecting literary criticism, the system also includes some evaluative conducts, such as literary award, literary education, literary publishing and the like, with these conducts working together, to build the entire evaluative system. The right and effective ways of building literary evaluative system are below:firstly, to stress the building of criticism ethic and criticism spirit, on the basis of constructing the better and big environment of criticism, to stress the personality cultivation of critics, and to insist the criticism spirit, to keep to the "sincere" criticism ethic. Secondly, to stick to critical principles, to improve the autorhythmicity of literary criticism. Thirdly, to promote the construction and reform of the mechanism and system of literary criticism which could guarantee its normalization and effectiveness. The nuclear value system could provide the most efficient leading of values for the development of literary criticism, so that it would guarantee the effective accomplishment of critical functions. The sixth is to expound the theoretical values and the practical senses of the evaluative orientation in literary criticism overall. This research somewhat adds one theoretical content for literary theoretical system, and enriches the critical theory of literary criticism, and prompts the buildings of subject on literary criticism, as well it builds a theoretical basis for constructing the nuclear value system of literary evaluation. Certainly, its theoretical values also provide some realistic senses for the development of literary criticism, and help literary criticism under the guiding of the nuclear values of literary criticism to explore the better developmental roads.