The Study Of Popular Literature Criticism In The New Period (The Early 1980s-the Early 1990s)

Popular Literature is a kind of literature genre which has strong sociality and effectiveness. It is written for readers'consumption; therefore the criticism to it is usually developed on the base of the readers' receiving psychology and effect. The criticism of Popular Literature in new period stems from the pressure of readers. By means of the definition of "reader" and the description of its position in the relationship with authors and works, the criticism possesses the functions of genre validity control and reasonable interpretation. As a result, raveling out the evolution of the critics'view on reader and exploring its generative motivation and sense based on readers'designatum and position is a feasible path to explore its value and function orientation, and ecological pattern, when studying the Popular Literature Criticism in new period.In the study of Popular Literature Criticism of new perid, "Reader" refers to those who have three dimensions of political validity, economic orientation and aesthetic ontology. At the beginning of the rise of popular literary fashion, authoritative discourse filters popular literature readers obtaining characters which cannot be subsumed by the mainstream ideology by giving "readers" status indicator. This makes the popular literature readers who is originally located in the ideological gray areas acquire legitimacy. With the popular literature gradually warming up, the popular literature readers'demands of entertainment, recreation and consumption demand can not be avoided. In this regard, literary criticism makes the vague concept of "reader" identity obtain demand connotation by taking on two measures:by the "form" of the mainstream ideology of authoritative discourse, and by the "spirit" of the extension of literary mainstream ideology. Popular literature readers will no longer need to get a place by borrowing the name of "people". Entertainment, recreation and even consumption demand have become the new dimension seeked by the popular literature readers in the new literature period. However, there are two ambiguous things if the conception of popular literature readers is only defined by the consumption demand. Firstly, First, people distinguish the demands of the popular literature readers with the demands of pornography, murder and vulgar. Secondly, people confuse the demands of the he popular literature and pure literature readers by regarding the consumption of literature as be a monolithic whole. Even some critics rebuked the formal exploration of the vanguard literature in the name of popular literature readers, and asked for unrealistic demands to "suit the common people". In response, some critics taking aesthetic criticism as the purport mines popular literature readers'aesthetic interest from the points of aesthetic psychology, aesthetic emotion, aesthetic values and aesthetic inertia. The popular literature readers then acknowledges a clear boundary of the abstract and macro concepts of the "people's Literature" and the "literature of human". The evolution of the reference of "Reader" which is from abstract and vague to concrete and clear highlights the complexity of Multi-Standard criticism of popular literature and the complexity of the mainstream ideology. Popular Literature Criticism is both modeled by the mainstream ideology and is related to the environment the readers growing. It also touches the aesthetic value of popular literature readers under the promotion of the aesthetic discourse.The evolution process of readers' position is caused by the literary criticism functions of adjusting, interpreting, and correcting born from the relationship of mainstream ideology and literary phenomenon. When Popular Literature as a new literary phenomenon came into being, through disciplining and purifying common readers, popular literature criticism was taken into Socialist Literature; with the economic and cultural foundation of popular literature phenomenon separated from original political ideology, the criticism had to abandon the wishful integrated plan to common readers and turned to capture rationality by interpreting the common readers' demand and aesthetic taste; when authoritative political discourse aggressively took literature consolidation which included strictly clearing, criticizing, guiding common readers, the common reader's scope extended to the most of readers of literature. Its influence expanded to the whole literary world. The secularization of aesthetic value orientation became the mainstream ideology in the later new era. Hereon, literature criticism gives play to functions of regulating literature rationality and political legitimacy, correcting literary concept, and even strategizing culture development.According to Foucault's Discourse Theory, the words that critics say based on readers reflect games between different discourses. On the longitudinal, effected by era environment and social structural relationship, the discourse has different practical form in different era. On the horizontal, different discourse subjects have different cognitions to readers in every era cultural environment. The interpretation around popular literature readers generates a discourse system. In the system, there are three basic discourses-political discourse, literature market discourse, and elite literature discourse. The three reinforce each other forming different kinds of opposed discourses. In the outside, there exists a field of power including political power, economic power and literary power. Three kinds of power legal defense themselves by using the practice of critical discourse system in which different critical discourses have visible and invisible change, strong and weak alternation. On the contrary, the system is enslaved to attaching and collapsing, hooking and gaming, combining and rejecting of the different kinds of power. Since the field of power leans to political and economic power, the critical discourse takes the mainstream ideology depending on political and economic power as the criterion. It shows strong anaclisis, lack of independent critical spirit and consciousness.