Stance Of Literariness-A Study Of J.M. Coetzee’s Criticism

John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-) was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a famous novelist, critic, scholar and translator. He is a well known novelist all over the world, but his identity of the critic is often overlooked. The topic of our study is to analyze Coetzee’s literary criticism, elaborate his view of literary criticism by combining with his fictions, and therefore highlight the contribution he made to the field of literary criticism.When we put Coetzee’s literary criticism into the background of criticism history, a tendency of "literary" shows in his Criticism. Dissatisfied with present literary criticism, Coetzee thought that the relationship between criticism and literature should be equal, and be the dialogue between critic and writer which based on works. To achieve this kind of equality, Coetzee adjusted himself from literary scholars to a novelist, critic and autobiographer. This sort of shift also reflected the changes in his view of Literature and Literary Criticism. Coetzee’s viewpoint of fiction can be analyzed from the following three aspects:the dispute of "text"and "thinking" in novel’s history, Coetzee’s viewpoint of writer-be the stenographer of this invisible world, and his viewpoint of work-imagine what is unimaginable and act as the competitor of history. His autobiography criticism was composed of two parts:we know that Coetzee agreed with literary autobiography by setting his autobiography practice in the context of the dispute of "text"and "thinking"; His unique Concept of autobiography can be summed as:all writing is autobiography, all autobiography is autre-biography.By combining his interviews with essays and adding criticism, autobiographies, lectures and other literary styles in fictions, Coetzee developed a unique form of literary criticism discourse in a hybrid way, this kind of discourse challenged the concept of traditional novels, criticism, autobiography and so forth. He made efforts to get rid of the monologue created by criticism theory today, and developed a new form of "literary criticism". From this perspective, he has made a useful and fruitful exploration.