Lichangzhi’s Emotional Criticism In Tsinghua University

LiChangzhi was active in literature criticism in last century. His study referred to both Chinese and western literature, ancient literature and modern literature. He not only paid attention to criticism theory, but also valued criticism practice. Contributing his whole life to criticism, his works are quite abundant. There are theoretical works such as The spirit of criticism, The bitter fog set and dreaming rain set. He also wrote a large number of books about biographical criticism, like The theory of Mao Dun, The analysis of ZhangZiping’s love story, The criticism of LuXun and Taoist poet LiBai and his pain and so on.In the history of modern Chinese literature criticism, LiChangzhi is one of the rare critics who regard criticizing as lifelong career. In fact he started to engaged in criticism activities in Tsinghua university. And there he also paid attention to criticism theory. His core idea is "Emotional Type"."Emotional Type" not only means a measure of criticizing literature works, but also a kind of aesthetic perception for him. So it requires critics putting themselves into the work with emotion so as to experience the feelings of authors’world as well as their life forms. In addition, as a professional critic, he also emphasizes the scientific and rational critique. His "Rational Hard" is a supplement to his form "Emotional Type ". As a result, his criticism is also combination of rational criticism and emotional criticism. To some extent, LiChangzhi’s criticizing style comes from different resources. There are different reasons on his advocating emotional criticism. One is his journal literature view, which promotes him to make sense of emotion. What’s more, German romantic criticism also has effect on his criticizing.In my paper, I will mainly focus on educational factor and his literature value.In young LiChangzhi’s opinion, writers and critics should work together by emotional experience, which we can find in his early criticism.Those poetic statements are typical examples of his emotional experience,which are relish and full of meaningful and emotional sentences. His perceptual and speculative reviewing by combining authors’ personality and style is so particular.Emotional criticism shows LiChangzhi’s particular criticizing style. He reads great writers by combining their personality and life forms with works’ style. As long as we read his criticism works, we can find that his emotional criticizing style formation also had a process. It is true that he spent a lot of time in criticism in university. We can also find development from his toddler footprint. For example,his modern literature criticism works are full of emotional experience. In a word, emotional criticism is the key to explaining to LiChangzhi’s criticism characteristic. As for this, The criticism of LuXun is the most important achievement in his early emotional criticism, which not only won him a big reputation, but also established his criticism style.