The Encounter between Cambridge Literary Criticism and China

Sha Ha

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.7n.4p.42

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to study the impact of Cambridge Literary Criticism (CLC) on Chinese scholars, since the visit to Peking’s Tsinghua University by Prof. Igor Armstrong Richards, the initiator of CLC, in 1929, until present times. That first encounter signed the beginning of a fruitful intercultural communication activity between the two countries, which lasted for a decennial. Those contacts between the British literary world, imbued with the scientific spirit that was the basis of ‘Cambridge Criticism’, was very stimulating for the Chinese academic world, of that was being born. Unfortunately, those contacts were forcefully interrupted in 1939, in the raging of the anti-Japanese war. They resumed, with fruitful results, toward the end of last millennium, when the Chinese government issued a “Program for Education’s Reform and Development in China”. In present times the new movement of ‘Ethical Literary Criticism’ is developing in China by initiative of Prof. Nie Zhenzhao, from Peking’s ‘Central China Normal University’, who took inspiration from the works of the Cambridge literary critic Frank Raymond Leavis.

Highlights

An international meeting on “Cambridge Criticism beyond Cambridge: F.R
The purpose of the present paper is to study the impact of Cambridge Literary Criticism (CLC) on Chinese scholars, since the visit to Peking’s Tsinghua University by Prof
The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the encounter of Cambridge Criticism with China by I

Summary

INTRODUCTION

An international meeting on “Cambridge Criticism beyond Cambridge: F.R. Leavis and others” was held at Tsinghua University, in Peking, from 29th June to 1st July, 2017: that initiative stimulated a debate among scholars concerning the first encounter between British and Chinese literary critics over one century ago. The leaders were I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis of the University of Cambridge and Richards’ pupil William Empson.’ (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2011). Leavis of the University of Cambridge and Richards’ pupil William Empson.’ (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2011) Those contacts ceased in 1939, owing to the raging of the ‘Anti-Japanese War’. According to the author of this paper, the importance of that encounter did not lie so much in the introduction of ‘Cambridge English’ in the newly established Department of English Studies at Tsinghua University in the academic year 1929/30, but in Richards’ illustration to his Chinese audience of a very innovative method of textual analysis through the use of quantitative methods, contained in his “Principles of Literary Criticism” (Richards,1924).

THE BIRTH OF CAMBRIDGE LITERACY CRITICISM

Chinese Ethical Literary Criticism in the New Millennium

CONCLUSIONS