Stephen Owen's Study On The Tang Literary History: In Post-modern Perspective

As one of the most important Sinologist, Stephen Owen is impressive:he reconsidered the narrative term of literary history in his study on the Tang literary history, constructed and improved some concepts such as'Court Poetry' and 'Capital Poetry'. His theory challenged the existing literary conception.When discussing the Court Poetry, Stephen Owen considered that the'individual creature' is just a presentation, what actually worked is the law, the convention and the knowledge systems of poem creation. We can obviously find the influence of structuralism theory from the discussion. As for the Capital Poetry, Owen emphasized the combination of literature, social network and the power of the symbol, and observed literature forwardly with discourse theory.Regarding the new writing style of literary history, Stephen Owen achieved the leap 'from Newtonian Physics to Quantum Physics'. In other words, he brought in the idea of uncertainty into literary history to revolt the literary history writing which is lineable and in 'idea history' pattern.Stephen Owen observed Chinese Literature from the perspective of the new criticism, structuralism, discourse theory and deconstruction theory. He found the problems that we could not find out in traditional research. His work enriched the study of Chinese classical literature and provided a useful reference to the study of Chinese classical literature and China's comparative literature.