什么是文学评论

关於文学的哲学性的、描述性、和评价探究的领域，包括文学是什麽、做什麽以及其价值何在。西方批评传统始於柏拉图的《理想国》（Republic，西元前4世纪）。一个世代之後，亚里斯多德在其《诗学》中发展出一套到现在仍旧影响很大的写作规则。欧洲批评主义自文艺复兴以来主要将焦点放在文学的道德价值与自然和现实之间的关系。16世纪末，西德尼爵士（Sir Philip Sidney）辩说文学的特质在於提供某些方面优於现实的想像世界。一个世纪後，德莱敦提出比较非理想主义的观点，他觉得文学主要为提供正确的「人类教导和趣事」的媒介，此假说成为波普（Alexander Pope）和约翰生（Samuel Johnson）伟大批评工作的基础。由这些观念来看浪漫主义时期所显现出来的批评，以华兹华斯（William Wordsworth）的主张为典型，他认为诗的对象要「是真实的……要用热情触动到内心的感觉」。到19世纪晚期发展为两个支派：一个是「为艺术而艺术」的美学理论，和阿诺德（Matthew Arnold）所主张的：假设宗教未普及，文学必须要具备道德和哲学功能的观点。文学评论的书籍在20世纪大量增加，并在近几年出现重新评估传统批评模式的现象，和批评派别多元化的发展。（参阅structuralism、poststructuralism、deconstruction）。

literary criticism

Discipline concerned with philosophical, descriptive, and evaluative inquiries about literature, including what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth. The Western critical tradition began with Plato's Republic (4th century BC). A generation later, Aristotle, in his Poetics, developed a set of principles of composition that had a lasting influence. European criticism since the Renaissance has primarily focused on the moral worth of literature and the nature of its relationship to reality. At the end of the 16th century, Sir Philip Sidney argued that it is the special property of literature to offer an imagined world that is in some respects superior to the real one. A century later, John Dryden proposed the less idealistic view that literature must primarily offer an accurate representation of the world for “the delight and instruction of mankind,” an assumption that underlies the great critical works of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. A departure from these ideas appeared in the criticism of the Romantic period, epitomized by William Wordsworth's assertion that the object of poetry is “truth . . . carried alive into the heart by passion.” The later 19th century saw two divergent developments: an aesthetic theory of “art for art's sake,” and the view (expressed by Matthew Arnold) that literature must assume the moral and philosophical functions previously filled by religion. The volume of literary criticism increased greatly in the 20th century, and its later years saw a radical reappraisal of traditional critical modes and the development of a multiplicity of critical factions (see structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction).