Reconsideration of Literary Criticism and Literary Theory—Speech in Graduate School of China Academy of Social Sciences in 9.16-19.2010

As one of disciplines and one of book categories in ancient times of China,literary criticism was first proposed by Jiao Hong,a scholar in the Ming Dynasty and then was commonly used in the process of compiling Complete Literary in the Four Branches of Literature in the Qing Dynasty.In other words,this term has been in use about 500-600 years since it was proposed and commonly used.However,as far as its content was concerned,it can be traced back to the Pre-qin Dynasty.The research of literary theory must turn to its origin and development processes.The pioneers of China's literary innovation and transformation in the late 19th century and the early 20th century launch the process of transformation from ancient literary criticism to modern literary theory on the basis of learning from western literary concepts.However,there is a distinctive difference between them since the philosophical basis for China's ancient literary criticism is ethic philosophy taking kindness as the centre while the western classic philosophy takes truth as the centre and the western literary theory and aesthetics are also based on it.The study of academic history of literary theory in the 20th century must be related with history and culture closely,that is,connecting its internal history with external history and taking the problems as the thread.In general,the development of China's literary theory in the 20th century can be divided into such 4 stages as preparing,transforming,fixing,and breaking through with their own characteric.