Ethical literary criticism should give an objective and just evaluation of the social, ethical and moral phenomena reflected in the literary work, and reveal its moral inspiration and value of edification. Photo: FILE

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As a form of literary criticism first proposed and elaborated on by Chinese scholars, ethical literary criticism shows its influence both domestically and abroad. It is seen as a successful example of Chinese academic theories going abroad and winning international academic discourse power.

Ethical literary criticism was originally proposed to address disturbing phenomena in literary criticism, especially criticism of foreign literature in China since the nation’s reform and opening up. Su Hui, a professor of literature from Central China Normal University, explained that these disturbing phenomena included, first of all, the aphasia of literary criticism—the absence of unique ethical discourse in criticism. The second problem being that literary criticism alienates itself from literature and shows a tendency prioritizing theories over the literary text. Another problem is the absence of morality in literary criticism, that is, literary criticism lacks a sense of social responsibility, Su said.

Targeting all these phenomena, Nie Zhenzhao, director of the Center of Cross-disciplinary Studies on World Literature, proposed the theory of ethical literary criticism in 2004. He suggested that literature by nature is an art about ethics and it is vital to stress the educational function of literature and the social responsibility of literary criticism. He proposes that ethical literary criticism should emphasize analyses of the various ethical choices shown in the literary text under its given historical circumstances. Literary criticism should give an objective and just evaluation of the social, ethical and moral phenomena reflected in the literary work, and reveal its moral inspiration and value of edification, he said.

Su suggested that compared with ethical criticism in the West, ethical literary criticism innovatively established its own system of theoretical discourses. It challenges traditional literary theories from the perspective of the origin, function and form of literature. It develops an expression theory of literary ethics, literary text theory, ethical choice theory and other theories. It sufficiently explains ethical phenomena in literary works and explores their ethical values, Su said.

For Nie, the reason ethical literary criticism has successfully travelled abroad is because it is a discourse system with Chinese characteristics. This makes ethical literary criticism, unlike other methods for literary criticism, one that can be used by many scholars to address problems in reality, he said.

Su suggested that ethical literary criticism not only aims to solve the problems facing Chinese literary criticism, but also actively engages in exchange and dialogue with the international academic community. This is important for literary criticism to overcome its tendency for Western centrism.

Marjorie Perloff, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, once commented that the ethical literary criticism proposed by Chinese scholars is of extraordinary significance. It not only revitalizes methods of ethical criticism, but also seizes the essence and fundamental values of literature. 

Only by exploring deep theoretical innovation and paying attention to Chinese problems and other common issues concerning all humanity, can Chinese academic studies attract the attention of foreign scholars. Nie suggested that ethical literary criticism should be capable of addressing both practical problems that exist in Chinese literary criticism and common problems facing world literature.

According to Su Hui, work should be done in the future to further develop the theory and practice of ethical literary criticism. The first act should be to collect and systematically organize both Chinese and foreign literature and materials on moral-ethical literary criticism. It will help portray its history of development and lay a foundation to further enrich and develop theories of ethical literary criticism. Second, the path of development of ethical literary criticism in China should be cleared up and the criticism paradigm and research strategies of ethical literary criticism should be explored. Thus, scholars can make a summary of the contribution of ethical literary criticism to contemporary literary criticism and academic studies.

Third, when applying methods of ethical literary criticism, scholars should devote more efforts to the ethical literary criticism of Eastern literature, Chinese literature included. When explaining and analyzing the ethics of the texts, it is important to pay more attention to the specific era and the ethical ideas of different ethnic groups and nations.

 

(edited by CHEN ALONG)