Beijing School Of Literary Criticism

This thesis reviews the historical situation and development of the Beiping School Criticism. Based on the case studies of the Beiping School critics, such as Shen Congwen(沈从文), Zhu Guangqian(朱光潜), Li Jianwu(李健吾), Liang Zongdai(梁宗岱) and Li Changzhi(李长之), we make an emphatic enquiry into their achievement in critical theory and practice when they approach toward a conscious aesthetic criticism. Althought the critics of Beiping School have not a clear-cut division of labor, their different critical characteristics still make up a literary criticism school. Shen Congwen encourages the humanist ideal; Zhu Guangqian lays a foundation for the School; Li Jianwu improves the quality of his impressionist criticism while thinking about the essence of criticism; Liang Zongdai explores the marvellous poetic realm; Li Changzhi recommends the critical spirit vigorously while trying to construct a literary discipline, and encourages the zeal of reconstructing the national culture by his emotion-centerism criticism. As a kind of criticism toward the conscious aesthetic, it brings about the synthesizs in two respects: Fist, on the prerequisite of conscious criticism, the school tries to construct a kind of relatively stable and comprehensive criticism pattern through the fusion of Chinese and Western cultural traditions. On the basis of taking Chinese and Western traditions as cultural resourses, they try to link up and synthesize these traditions on the leves of cultural spirit, critical approaches, thinking way and critical terminologys, and achieve valuable experiences, many of which have already become the base and prerepuisite of further development of the literary theory and criticism nowadays. Second, Beiping School's criticism constructs a new criticism pattern in order to provide a new way of experience, the way by which literary criticism intervenes society. So, Beiping School's criticism tries to achieve the Interaction between Social commitment and Aesthetic interest. This kind of aesthetic consciousness is not escaping from the social duty, but containing the latter with the former. Viewed from this perspective, Beiping School's and Left Wing's criticisms misunderstand and conflict with each other, while communicate and inspire each other, and achieve the same comprehension on some important theoretical questions. As a kind of conscious aesthetic criticism, Beiping School's Criticism is of a unique style in the history of Modern Chinese Literature, and would inspire our constructing of criticism nowadays.