APPROACHES TO MODERN LITERARY THEORIES

2 Modern Chinese literature is inseparable from the concept of Chinese " modernity " and therefore inseparable from the social and historical conditions at the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth, which witnessed unprecedented challenges to traditional Chinese social structure, the collapse of the Qing Empire, and the end of dynastic history. The concept of modernity was self‐consciously defined against that old imperial system and the entire traditional apparatus that sustained its political and cultural edifice. However, modernity is by no means a simple concept, and there is much discussion of its problematic nature in recent scholarship because it is a contested concept not only in the discourse of postmodernism, which supposedly supersedes it, but also in the critique of modernity as a normative concept based on European historical experience at the expense of a more expansive view of global history. Since the beginning of the twenty‐first century, " multiple modernities " has become a common term in the scholarly discourse in the humanities and social sciences. " One of the most important implications of the term 'multiple modernities' is that modernity and Westernization are not identical. Western patterns of modernity are not the only authentic modernities, though they enjoy historical precedence and continue to be a basic reference point for others " (Sachsenmaier, Riedel, with Eisenstadt 2002: 27). In other words, modernity is now understood as a much broader concept than what an earlier discourse of modernization signified in much of the twentieth century, in which modernity was understood largely on the basis of European history and Western social, political, and cultural patterns. Not only has the idea of multiple modernities been proposed to accommodate a more expansive view, but the idea of multiple " early modernities " has also been discussed with fruitful results. It is not enough just to recognize that " the modern age, in both its geopolitical aspirations and economic underpinnings, was always already

Amerikastudien/American Studies, 1977

A systematic survey of the theories concerning the terms 'modem,' 'postmodern' and 'contemporary' reveals the wide range of different approaches in search of categories for the analysis of 20th century literature. Two fundamental positions emerge: on the one hand a discontinuity between 'modem' and 'postmodern' analogous to the structural opposition of two different principles of integration: subjectivity and absence of subjectivity; on the other hand a continuity from 'modem' to 'postmodern' as a logical further development. The modem writers' subjective sensibility creates highly structured artifacts with new forms and techniques as a reflex reaction to the inhuman aspects of modem industrial society; postmodern writers, in a dual process of physical reduction and spiritual expansion, move away from all thematic or formal constraints, giving themselves up to the anarchy of pure imagination. 'Contemporary' is used as a loose term for a literature critical of social conditions; it fits into neither the 'modem' nor the 'postmodern' category. While 'modem' and 'postmodern' can serve as models of explanation for the categorization of literature, such terms as 'contemporary' and 'avant-garde' are bound to an historical context and resist any practical systematization. The concepts 'modern,' 'postmodern' and 'contemporary,' both as categories for the classification of 20th century literature and as poetic manifestations of a particular historic period, postulate an interrelationship of each with developments in non-literary reality. This procedure implies a contextual approach; it assumes a necessary relationship between literature and the complex set of surrounding circumstances. This relationship can be seen as reciprocal-as dialectic?-or as a reflex reaction on the part of literature. The perspective implied by the term 'modern' is decisive. The word itself, which is strongly colored by everyday usage 1 and which from the outset was used to identify the literature in question here, means of the "present and recent times," "new-fashioned, not antiquated." 2 It implies that the thing thus described does not merely belong to the present, but rather is especially apt and appropriate to the present, indeed, is uniquely and exclusively appropriate and relevant to "our time." 3 Applied to literature it means that only that kind of literature is "modem" which "suits" the present by virtue of its relevant, that is to say mimetically or critically explanatory, relationship to the present. Historical usage imposes the first limitation on the term 'modernism.' It was first used by and in connection with a specific group of 20th century writers: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound. These authors emphasized in their theoretical writings that 1 It might well be asked whether the concept is suitable at all for formalization in the metalanguage of literary criticism. One thinks constantly of things like modem furniture, modem styling, etc. when using the word. 2 According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, 5th ed. (1964), Modem English for example is English from the 16th century onwards. 3 "Our time" can be defined as the period which the majority of the people alive today has consciously experienced.

The Import of Literary Criticism, 2019

Abstract With the present global inclination to science, technology, and agriculture, criticism seems to have been tilted in that direction. The flame of reading literature seems to be going out gradually but steadily and with it, the reading and mastery of its prescriptive theories and their application to literary texts. If we consider that literature is concerned with life’s affairs which are more pressing than the reading black and white symbols of a text and their abstract interpretation, if we consider that literature is a vortex where distant and usually seemingly unrelated areas of human knowledge meet and interact, that war, the environment, the economy and even politics are involved in literary studies, then we would try to value the text more, and its criticism which is the decoding of the message of the text, which sometimes has a problem solving perspective, would be given its due import, since literature is in fact, a pattern of infinite potentialities, proffered by an absence presence, which have to be investigated through the right procedures. Because this domain is involved with every sphere of life, the import of getting its message cannot be overrated. However, the shade of meanings got without the use of literary theories would be highly informal, judgmental, and oftentimes superficial. Literary criticism is meant to throw light into the text through theories, and to assess the public comprehension of the text. In this vein, criticism is more important than the text, for it says in several ways what the text says. The main thrust of this paper is its attempt at encouraging literary criticism by showing how beneficial it is to the reader, writer and critic as individuals and to the society as a whole. Keyword: Criticism

2015

2013

This essay attempts to compare and contrast the variegated thoughts of modernity by the selected theorists as well trace their ideas in the prescribed literary and filmic texts.

In the East, even in the most parts of the West, modernity has been an omnipresent phenomenon. It becomes the ultimate goal of modernization. However, modernity appears in the Western history, shortly after birth, which emphasizes the rationality of modernity has been criticized among the romantic and irrational which rely more on feelings, spontaneity, and intuition, rather than sense. The next Critics regard modernity not only as a solution, but also a problem. For example, nationalism gives birth to anti-Jewish attitudes and industrialization gives birth to imperialism. The same patter goes with science and technology. It is problematic in axiology, ontology and epistemology. The universality of science in the latter period is rejected trough relativity theory and quantum theory. in the view of the post-structuralist, science is considered as a product of power. Modernity is also considered to have made a person has lost the soul and spirituality. Regarding the development of modernity, it is called postmodernity, for some experts, it is a new social configuration which is different, even disconnected with early modernity. As for the opposite, modernity today is a continuation of the previous modernity as a reflexive project to make life goes forward.