【正文】 th century, one that of the Russian formalists (see Shklovsky and Eichenbaum) and the other that of the American New Critics (see Ransom, Blackmur, Brooks, Wimsatt, and Beardsley), who 9 attacked any determinations of meaning in a work by recourse either to authorial intention or to a reader‘s response. Objective Theories: 夫詩有別材，非關書也；詩有別趣，非關理也。風，風也，教也；風以動之，教以化之。 (then) the square (., earth) and the round (., heaven) separated their bodies。 Karl Mark, A Contribution of the Critique of Political Economy。 Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning。 Leroy Searle ed., Critical Theory Since Plato (Beijing: Peking Univ. Press, 2022) 4) Thomas H. Greer, A Brief History of the Western World (Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992). 5) 朱光潛：《西方美學史》（上、下）； 6) 伍蠡甫、胡經之：《西方文藝理論名著選編》（上、中、下）； 7) 伍蠡甫：《西方文論選》； 8) 李賦寧主編：《歐洲文學史》（ 4）。 Course Schedule: 1. Introduction (1 week): 2. Critical Theories in Greek Times (3 weeks): Plato: Republic。 4 6. Critical Theories in the Age of Neoclassicism (1 week): Pierre Corneille, Of the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place。 10. New Developments in Theory (1 week): Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance 11. Writing and Submitting the course paper. 5 Introduction What is the nature of literature? What function – socially as well as aesthetically, does literature perform? What are the intrinsic qualities that a literary work is supposed to have? All these are questions that a critical theory intends to answer. And it is the different answers to those questions that distinguish one critical theory from the other. I For a clear, though seemingly simplified illustration on the orientations that characterize different critical theories, I‘d like to remend you a scheme or a triangle set forth in M. H. Abrams‘ The Mirror and the Lamp (1953). According to Abrams, there are altogether four elements involved in literature: the work, the artist, the audience, and the universe from which the work derives or signifies or reflects. And the emphasis upon any single relation between two elements leads to one particular type of critical theory: mimetic theories, pragmatic theories, expressive theories and objective theories. (mimetic theory) universe ↑ work (objective theory) ↙ ↘ artist audience (expressive theory) (pragmatic theory) Mimetic theories privilege the relation of the literary work to the world (the universe) and usually define literature in terms of imitation (mimesis). Or to put it simply, mimetic theories argue that literature is the imitation or copying of the universe, therefore, mimetic theories usually judge a work on the accuracy or the verisimilitude of its presentation of the universe. (Just as Socrates puts it, the arts of painting, poetry, music, dancing, and sculpture are all imitations. And roughly in the same token, Samuel Johnson says the Shakespeare?s drama is the “mirrour of life”.) There is little doubt mimesis was the dominant critical term in the west from Plato well into the Renaissance (even in 20th century the Soviet social realism), though during that long stretch of time it underwent several shifts of meaning because critics differ from each other with respect to 6 the identity or the notion of ―universe‖, or the object to be imitated by literature: for Plato it is the eternal Ideas, for Aristotle, it is human action or human society, for Horace it is the Greek masterpieces, for the neoPlatonists such as Plotinus it is the One, for 18th century neoclassicism it is human nature. 1. 古者包犧氏之望天下也，仰則觀象于天，俯則觀法于地，觀鳥獸之文與地之宜，近取諸身，遠取諸物，于是始作八卦 。 the sun and the moon, twin jade discs, suspended their signs attached to heaven。（《詩大序》） Guan Ju is the virtue (德 )of the Queen Consort and the beginning of the Feng. It is the means by which the world is influenced (風 ) and by which the relations between husband and wife correct (正 ). Thus it is used in smaller munities, and it is used in large states. ―Airs‖ are ―Influence‖。然非多讀書多窮理，則不能極其至。 but until poetry could find a theory that would overe its relegation to subjectivity, it would suffer denigration of its value. The rise of aesthetics was such attempt, particularly Kant‘s efforts to establish what he oxymoronically called ?subjective universality‘ in aesthetic response. But, as is so often the case, the problem was not so much solved in favor of another one: As the ontological question led to the epistemological one, so the epistemological question led to the linguistic one. To ask about Being led inevitably to ask about how and what we can know. But other questions came to seem prior to this one. Can what we call knowing occur apart from language, to what extent does language inform us, and to what extent are we enclosed within it? For a very long time, with some important exceptions, philosophers considered language as a way of expressing and municating prior experiences and ideas, which it translated into or represented in words. But as the epistemological phase developed it seemed that the matter was much more plicated, that language, not merely perception, played a constitutive role in the way reality appeared to us. The idea of language as imitating or representing some prior entity now had to vie with the idea that language made these entities or at least establish the limits within which entities existed for us. …. 11 It has always been recognized, of course, that poetry is posed of language. From the earliest times poets have been obsessed with language as medium of their art…. But the new linguistic age saw language as fundamental to human nature, not just as a human tool. The 20th century excursion into language theory known as semiotics or the theory of sign is inte