In the early Tang dynasty, an important problem faced by the development of literature was how to correct the shortcomings of literary creation since the Southern Dynasties, which emphasized form over content. In the late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the early Song Dynasty, this situation appeared in a new form. Therefore, there was a literary movement of retro and novelty in the Tang and Song Dynasties. The difference is that the retro movement in the Tang Dynasty is the retro movement in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, while the retro movement in the Song Dynasty is the retro movement in the fine literary tradition of the Tang Dynasty. An important theoretical proposition of the ancient prose movement in Tang and Song Dynasties is that "Ming Dow is the body of prose". Both Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan advocated this idea. Li Han, a proté gé of Han Yu, pointed out in the Preface to the Collected Works of Mr. Changli: "A writer is also a tool to penetrate Taoism." Zhou Dunyi in the Song Dynasty pointed out: "Wen, so it carries Tao." (Shu Tong's Wen Ci) Although ancient writers in the Tang and Song Dynasties all emphasized it, their specific connotations were different, some emphasized the ancient Confucian way, and some emphasized the realistic interpretation of "assisting the affairs of the times". This theory had a great influence on the literary theory of later generations, and many people continued to advocate it until the Ming and Qing Dynasties and modern times, which became a sharp weapon for literary theory to oppose ignoring ideological content. As for the Neo-Confucianism in Song Dynasty, which rejected the laws of literature and art by orthodoxy, its theory was narrow and its practice was harmful, which had little influence on later literary theories.
In terms of poetry, the "Han Wei Style" or "Jian An Style" advocated by Chen Ziang and others in the early Tang Dynasty played a great role in the healthy development of poetry in the Tang Dynasty. Du Fu's "Six Plays" not only criticized the legacy of Qi Liang, but also put forward the idea of "learning from many teachers", emphasizing drawing on the creative experience of predecessors, which is also of positive significance to promoting the development of poetry in Tang Dynasty. The New Yuefu Movement, represented by Bai Juyi, gave new content to the traditional principle of "beauty thorn", especially "thorn", and developed it to a new height, that is, literature was required to play an active role in social life as much as possible. This is the essence of democracy in ancient literary criticism. The poetics represented by Jiao Ran and Si Kongtu not only makes a detailed and in-depth discussion on the style of poetry, but also discusses the artistic conception in poetry aesthetics, the dynamic beauty of poetry, the relationship between foreign objects and the author's feelings and thoughts, the problem that poetry should pay more attention to melody than words, and the problems of "image", "taste" and "similarity". Although there are many negative factors in their theory, it is of positive significance to discuss the artistic law of poetry creation, especially the short-term lyrical description of scenery, to promote the development of China's poetry aesthetics.
The theory of poetry and song in the Song Dynasty has played an active role in opposing the "Kunxi style" in the early Song Dynasty, as well as opposing the later generations to take words as poems, arguments as poems, and "quotations and handouts" as poems. It is worth noting that a new form of theoretical criticism appeared in the Song Dynasty: poetry talk. Among them, Zhang Jie's "Han Sui Tang" and Yan Yu's "Cang Lang Shi Hua" are the most influential, which sharply criticize the above-mentioned tendency of violating artistic laws from different angles. While criticizing the abuses of Song poetry, Cang Hua also puts forward a series of theoretical problems about poetry creation, and makes in-depth discussions, such as the problems of "unique material" and "unique interest" in poetry creation, that is, the image feeling and thinking ability, the "true color" beauty in artistic expression, and the vivid expression of poetry, which are quite insightful. Among them, the ideas about "interest" and "wonderful enlightenment" also have certain reasonable factors. Yan Yu inherited the poetic theories of Jiao Ran and Si Kongtu in many aspects and developed them. However, the negative factors in his poetic theory also influenced later generations. For example, the theory of verve in the early Qing Dynasty was developed by absorbing some negative factors in Yan Yu's poetics. After the Song Dynasty, poetry talks continued to develop, and many influential works appeared one after another, such as Jiangzhai poetry talks, Yuan poetry talks, Suiyuan poetry talks and so on. Until modern times, poetic talk has always been an important form of poetic theory criticism. With the development of poetry talk, ci talk, qu talk and so on appeared later.
The creation of ci has made great achievements in the Song Dynasty. Many problems encountered in the development of Ci, such as the relationship between Ci and poetry and music, the theme and expression of Ci, and the relationship between "emptiness" and "essence", were also reflected in the theory of Ci at that time. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many new features appeared in China literature, the most prominent of which was the prosperity of novels and operas, and a number of works which occupied an important position in the history of literature appeared. Reflected in literary theory criticism, novel theory criticism and drama theory criticism have also developed. As Li Yu said: "There is a kind of writing between heaven and earth, that is, there is a kind of legal pulse criterion of writing." The discussion on literary creation of novels and operas constitutes a new feature of literary theoretical criticism in this period.
Judging from the theoretical criticism of novels, there are two main forms: one is the preface and postscript of novels; The first is the novel review. Although their theoretical criticism is sporadic, it covers a wide range, such as the theory of loneliness and anger, the relationship between novels and reality, the relationship between life truth and artistic truth, the social role of novels in commenting on world events and the rise and fall of past dynasties, the talents, knowledge and literary accomplishment that novelists need, the personalized and typical creation of novel language and characters, and the reality, vividness and artistry of novels. This form of criticism originated in the Southern Song Dynasty and was further widely used in novels and operas in the Ming Dynasty. Due to the extensive influence of Li Zhi's comment on Water Margin in Ming Dynasty, this form of comment developed rapidly. Later comments on The Romance of The Three Kingdoms by Mao Zonggang, Jin Ping Mei by Zhang Zhupo and A Dream of Red Mansions by Zhi Yanzhai also had great influence. In addition to novels and operas, other forms of works, such as essays and poems, as well as historical books (such as Zuo Zhuan and Guoyu) and selected books (such as Selected Works) also have comments. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, comments became a very common form of expressing theoretical criticism.
Judging from the theoretical criticism of traditional Chinese opera, apart from preface and postscript comments, there is also an important form, namely Quhua and Qulun. Representative works include Xu Wei's The Narration of Southern Ci in Ming Dynasty, Wang Jide's Qulv and Li Yu's Suiyuan in Qing Dynasty. Although Li Yu's understanding of the content and social function of traditional Chinese opera has a distinct feudal ethical concept, he is concerned about various problems in the creation of traditional Chinese opera, such as paying attention to structure, establishing the theme, shaping and embodying the relationship between typical characters, main characters and secondary characters, concentrating and summarizing art, caring and ambushing characters and events, the importance of individualization of characters' language, the relationship between scenery description and lyricism, the rationality of plot arrangement, artistic innovation and sound, etc. Suiyuan is the most important work in China's traditional opera theory.
Another outstanding feature of literary theory criticism in Ming and Qing dynasties is that it shows a distinct anti-feudal ethical code color in some works. This is directly related to the emergence and development of capitalist factors in social life at that time and the expansion of the civil class. This color can be seen in Li Zhi's theory of childlike innocence, in the works of Tang Xianzu, Xu Wei and Gong 'an, in Jin Shengtan's comments on traditional operas and in Yuan Mei's theory of spiritual nature. Its central content is to oppose the imprisonment and strangulation of people's legitimate feelings by feudal ethics, and to require literature to express people's true hearts and feelings. This is very noteworthy.
In terms of poetic theory, in addition to the above, there also appeared in the Ming and Qing Dynasties the retro theory of the former and the latter seven scholars, the verve theory developed by Wang Shizhen after inheriting the previous verve theory, Shen Deqian's temperament theory based on gentle and honest poetry, Weng Fanggang's texture theory based on accumulated knowledge and Tongcheng School's prose theory. Some of the theories of these schools have reasonable factors, and some emphasize improperly, which leads to the absurdity of the main aspects; Some people have desirable and even incisive opinions in art, but they are backward in ideological tendency. In the early Qing Dynasty, a group of thinkers represented by Wang Fuzhi made positive contributions to literary theory criticism. Apart from Wang Fuzhi's Jiang Zhai Shi Hua, Ye Xie's poetic theory has the highest achievement. Although his original poems were neglected for a long time in the Qing Dynasty, many theoretical issues were discussed much more than those of his predecessors, which made new contributions to ancient literary theory.
In the long-term development, China's ancient literary criticism has been deeply studied and discussed in combination with various literary creation practices, and accumulated extremely rich experience, showing distinctive national characteristics. For example, Fu, Bi, Xing, Form and Spirit, Emotion and Reason, Literature and Quality, Literature and Taoism, Emotion and Circumstance, Illusion and Truth, Virtual and Reality, Charm, Charm, Interest, Imagination and Xing. Both are unique and rich concepts in China's ancient literary theory. Formally, although there are relatively few works with a strict theoretical system, and most of them are scattered in the sea of Wang Yang, such as history books, notes, prefaces and postscripts, poems, ci-Hua, qu-Hua, fu-Hua and comments, they have put forward many incisive opinions on a series of problems in literary creation and literary theory, which have high theoretical value. From the way of expression, although generally speaking, we don't pay much attention to abstract and logical inference and generalization, but we attach great importance to direct aesthetic feeling and discriminating artistic appreciation, which is often subtle, understandable but difficult to express. All these reflect the characteristics of China's ancient literary criticism. China's literary theory criticism developed to modern times, and began to change with the rapid changes of social contradictions and social nature and the introduction of western literary theories. Early modern enlighteners, such as Gong Zizhen, have realized the importance of changing it, although they mainly use traditional literary theories. They generally advocated that literature should be changed together with social life, which profoundly reflected the era of "thousands of troops and horses" at that time, and they were indignant and moved to promote social change and development. At the same time, he bluntly opposed the "pseudo-body" of moaning without illness and "painting empty cars and flowers", demanded that literature should respect feelings, especially attract upward feelings, and emphasized that literature should play a political role of "managing the world and rectifying the times". This has a great influence on the later improvement of distribution. Reformists began to introduce western modern literary theories. Huang Zunxian paid special attention to the innovation of poetry from content to form, while Liang Qichao and others put special emphasis on the social function of literature, proposing "the revolution of poetry", "the revolution of literature" and "the revolution of novels", advocating the liberation of literary style, and to some extent opposing the imprisonment of feudal dogma and the literary theory of Tongcheng School. They openly advocate that literature should learn from the West, introduce western novel theories such as "realism" and "romanticism", advocate that literature should serve reformism, and even take the improvement of novels as the basis of social improvement. The "novel revolution" advocated by them and the "drama revolution" advocated by Nanshe later had a great influence on improving the social status of novels and operas. Although modern literary theory also has inevitable limitations, it has made a historic contribution to the liberation of literary thoughts.
Wang Guowei is an important representative of literary theory criticism in late modern times. Influenced by modern western science, he absorbed the aesthetic thoughts of Kant and Schopenhauer on the basis of traditional literary theory. Although there are many dross in his literary theory, there are also many original opinions, which give a new explanation to the traditional theory of realm (see artistic conception).
In the period of the old democratic revolution, although there were many schools and works in the traditional poetry theory, except for a few works such as Liu Xizai's Introduction to Art and Kuang Zhouyi's HSBC Thorn, which put forward some valuable opinions on artistic creation, most of them were due to Chen Xiangyin's lack of originality and low achievement, and often showed backward or even reactionary ideological tendencies. The revolutionary literary theory criticism work in this period is the Young Lu Xun's On Moro Poetry. In this book full of revolutionary passion, it not only absorbs the essence of traditional literary theory criticism, but also shows a firm and brave anti-feudal spirit, and puts forward literature with democratic spirit that completely breaks through the shackles of traditional poetry teaching for more than 2,000 years, and actively introduces it to Europe and Russia "which means resistance and points to action". It marks the transition from traditional literary theory criticism to modern literary theory criticism. During the May 4th New Culture Movement, many people advocated the anti-feudal "literary revolution" in theory, and Hu Shi was one of them. He advocated vernacular literature and played an active role in the conflict with feudal literary thoughts. But his so-called "literary revolution" is actually just a kind of progress.
After the May 4th Movement, the influence of the October Revolution and The Birth of China brought about qualitative changes in ideology and culture, including literary theory criticism. Marxism and Marxist literary theory have spread rapidly in China. Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and other early founders of China all publicized the Marxist view of literature and art, and Qu Qiubai and Lu Xun were the most important representatives of spreading Marxist literary theory before 1930s. Qu Qiubai was the earliest advocate of proletarian literature and literature popularization in China. His theoretical criticism articles, such as Preface to Selected Works of Lu Xun's Miscellaneous Feelings, are of great significance to the establishment of China's Marxist literary theory criticism. He vigorously translated and introduced Marx, Engels, Lenin, lavr Gai, plekhanov, Gorky and other literary theory works, which had a far-reaching impact on the literary movement at that time. After the May 4th Movement, Lu Xun has been the leader of the New Culture Movement, including the New Literature Theory Criticism Movement. Before he became a communist party member, he used revolutionary democracy as a weapon to sweep away feudal literary thoughts and impart various feudal thoughts, from "innocence" to feudal principles, from "moderation of Confucianism" to "quintessence of Chinese culture" and from Jiayin Weekly to Xue Heng. After becoming a native of communist party, he was an enthusiastic propagandist and defender of Marxist literary theory, and also a fighter against feudalism and bourgeois literary thought. In his later years, he not only tried to introduce Marxist literary theory, but also wrote many literary theory works shining with Marxism. The value of Lu Xun's literary theory lies not only in his courage to consistently adhere to Marxist literary principles under the white terror, but also in his courage to fight against mechanism and dogmatism when propagating Marxist literary theory within the revolutionary camp. He called for the creation and development of proletarian new literature, and was good at absorbing the rich heritage of literature and literary theory at home and abroad. He is good at learning from foreign countries, but he is firmly opposed to worshipping foreign things. Lu Xun is not only a giant in the history of modern literature in China, but also a giant in the history of modern literary theory criticism in China.
Although feudalism and bourgeois literary theory after the May 4th Movement can't be completely obliterated, in fact, their representatives can't make any new and important contributions at this time. Moreover, with the deepening and development of the revolution, they stood more and more openly on the opposite side of proletarian literature, and their literary theory was finally defeated and replaced by Marxist literary theory.