A Research On Chinese Literary Criticism From1949to1966

The ideal literature prospect expected by the seventeen-year literary criticism has encountered some predicaments concerning specific style and specific text in the process of practice. This paper aims to explore these predicaments. We argue that seventeen-year literary criticism has always been in a state of tension and anxiety due to urgent innovation. Although it seems to be completly perfect in macro planning, this innovative intention encountered obstacles heritaged from aesthetic form history. Therefore, critics can’t timely and boldly confirm what is new and what is old, nor can they properly and effectively deal with the relationship between the old and the new. Facing the specific literature state made happen by themselves, literary critics expressed their dissatisfaction again and again. Moreover, they tried many times to explore. Unfortuantely, they confornted failure again and again. It seems impossible to get rid of the awkward situation. Concerning that previous studies mainly focused on the scattered analysis on the major events, this paper takes a new point of view, that is, presents a vein combing and detailed description of the process and difficulties of literary criticism by adopting the method of stylistic research.Chapter one summarizes the field characteristics of seventeen-year literary criticism. We argue that the orientation of seventeen-year literary criticism is the literary struggle. This determines that there are strong struggle flavor and integration feature in the the field of seventeen-year literary criticism. As the supreme principle of seventeen-year literary criticism, socialist realismis is considered to embody literary ideas of modernity. However, this caused the serious neglection of theme, genre and style. The composition and change of the literary critics depends on the timeliness and accuracy of their understanding of politicized literary discourses. Therefore, the space for showing their personality is very limited because of the strong post consciousness. Chapter two describes the development of full-length novel criticism and predicaments.The full-length novel is the stylistic which socialist realism mainlyd rely on. Early in the founding of China, critics had effectively disciplined contempary full-length novel concerning naturalism and dogmatism. After that, they put forward the concept of epic to enhance and confirm the quality of the novel. However, in the shaping of future prospects image, for the lack of specific life support, there existed some problems, such as, insurmountable idealism and damaged authenticity. This is a paradox of predicaments. Concerning the problem of nationalization, novel criticism is facing the contradiction between the tendency of "heavy things light people" brought about by nationalization and "heavy people light things " required by socialist realism and readability. It is difficult to obtain historical time to solve such contradictions. Chapter three describes the research conditions of seventeen-year literary criticism in short fiction. We argue that socialist realism brought about a chronic illness to the style specification of short fiction, that is, short fiction is not really short. The advantages of short fiction, such as plot, allegory and lyricism can be used to cure the illness. However, at this time, these advantages were regarded as weaknesses of short fiction. In chapter four, we argue that the quality requirement of plays is very urgent for the theatre art attribute. On the one hand, critics called improvment of artistic quality based on socialist realism; on the other hand, they faced a narrow understanding and nitpick of art criticism. Facing the hard problem concerning the inability to keep a balance between "people" and "things", critics have carried out bold explorations by making use of the chance of expressing different thoughts, discussing historical play and improving literature and art. However, these explorations either faced knowledge dilemma or went back to the original problem framework. As a result, they appeared to have little effect. Chapter five analyses and describes the situation of uncertainty in the form of new poetry in the People’s Republic of China. Although the seventeen-year literary critics can not bear tolerant the anarchy of the form of new poetry, their suggestions were sharply divided. Various poetic power rose and fell according to different cultural forces, but didn’t get general consent in the poetic field. Some successful poetry such as lyric poetry of life, lyric poetry of politics and narrative poetry also faced such problems as oversteping the boundary of the style and having improper style tendency. The form anxiety of the new poetry lasted forever. Chapter six discusses such questions as the revival of the prose concept in the prose criticism, the crisis of the close-up stylistic connotation and the variation of essays. We argue that the variation of the prose style pattern is the result of socialist realism’s praising highly the narrative style and changes of the political situation.In a word, in this paper, we hold the belief that the predicaments encountered by the seventeen-year literary criticism is the result of confused thinking of history and the conflict between consciousness in surpassing historical experience at the macro level and the unconsciousness in the involvement in historical experience at the micro level.