What is the relationship between the evolution of literary ideas and the evolution of literature itself?

Literary theory is essentially an aspect of human self-awareness, so it is directly restricted by the overall self-awareness-the concept of literary theory has become the yardstick for people to deeply understand themselves. Therefore, if someone asks what is the use of literary theory, we can confidently answer: it can at least let people know themselves from one side. Here we will take people's self-awareness as a clue to investigate the evolution of theoretical concepts about literary creation, or the trajectory of people's self-awareness infiltrating into literary creation concepts. 1. The background of the theory of imitation is the same as the theory of "poetry expressing ambition" in China's ancient literary concept. Imitation theory can be said to be the "pioneering program" of western literary concepts. In ancient Greece, from Heraclitus to democritus, from Socrates to Aristotle, almost everyone involved in literary issues thought that literature was an imitation of external things. The only difference between them lies in their different understanding of what they imitate. Without exception, this imitation theory presupposes such a theoretical concept: man and the external world constitute a binary opposition relationship model between subject and object, and man, as the subject, can grasp the external world as the object. This theoretical presupposition is not only the epistemological basis of ancient Greek literary ideas, but also the most important epistemological basis of western literary theories in the past two thousand years. For example, as the pioneer of ancient Greek philosophy, Miletus School put forward the question of the origin of the world at the beginning of its opening on the basis of the mutual infiltration and mutual triggering between ancient myths and ancient Egyptian astronomy and geometry, and was convinced that it was possible to discover and reveal the origin of the world by virtue of human wisdom. From a new perspective, these "elements" or "noumenons" are of course not objective existence, but people's subjective construction. Of course, it includes factors of reasoning and imagination, but it is more an empirical guess. This speculation itself may not have any practical significance, but it constitutes the basic epistemological setting of ancient Greek philosophy: the composition of the external world is orderly, and human subjective ability can grasp this external order. The emergence of this epistemological setting is the product of the interaction between pre-existing ideological materials and the social needs they face, that is, the product of the integration of cultural context and historical context. The pre-existing ideological materials provide the way and topic of speech, and the needs of social history provide the power and motivation of speech. Without one of them, it is impossible to form an effective speech. Of course, the uniqueness of the epistemological basis of ancient Greek literary ideas is highlighted with reference to China's ancient epistemology. Perhaps by comparing Plato's and Mencius' epistemological views, we can better see the differences between the two different cultural systems. Plato's epistemological viewpoint is clearly reflected in his "cave metaphor" theory. For example, he said: People in the real world are like living in a cave. They face the cave wall with their backs to the mouth of the cave, and they are tied up and unable to turn. Some people walk around the fire with dummies made of stone or wood. The bound people can only vaguely see the shadow of the fire behind them reflected on the cave wall. They regard these shadows as the most real things in the world. They don't know that the world in the sun outside the cave is the real world. Once they leave the cave and come to the real world, there will still be many unaccustomed, and it will take a long time to figure out the falsehood inside the cave and the truth outside it. The so-called real world is the world of ideas. The moral of this metaphor is that the meaning of life lies in recognizing the truth of the world. But how can we rise from the false world to the real world? This requires the help of "memory"-in Plato's view, the human soul is immortal and has knowledge about the conceptual world, but when the human body and soul are combined, this knowledge is forgotten. Educators want to remind people of their original knowledge through inspiration, not to give people new knowledge. Through this metaphor, Plato's epistemological model is as follows: the world as an object is divided into truth and fallacy; As a subject, man has the ability to grasp the inner truth through superficial falsehood. People's knowledge behavior is the process of rising from the false world to the real world. This is also the basic epistemological model that has ruled the western intellectual circles for more than two thousand years. The epistemological model of China in the pre-Qin period, represented by Mencius, is quite different from this. "Mengzi Gaozi" contains Mencius' answer to disciple "Are you a man, an adult or a villain?" The question pointed out: "The official of the eyes and ears, without thinking, covers things up, and what is handed over is just brought over." The official of the heart thinks, thinks and gets it, but doesn't think about it. If the place of this day is with me, whoever stands up first will be big, and whoever is small will be able to catch it. This is just an adult. Looking at the meaning of Mencius, Gai takes "heart" as the main body of thinking. It can make people transcend the external material world and the internal material desire. Senses such as eyes and ears can only establish a materialistic relationship with the material world. The former makes people become "adults", that is, people with reason and moral cultivation; The latter makes people become "villains", that is, people covered by material desires. The function of education is to inspire people to mobilize their own "heart" as the main body of thinking and cultivate their own moral rationality, so as to become "adults", that is, people with moral cultivation. This process is the so-called "seeking reassurance" process. Therefore, the epistemological model given by Mencius is this: the truth of being a man exists in people's hearts, but it is hidden because of material desires. The subject of thinking, that is, "mind", has the ability to make people transcend material desires and become a self-disciplined moral subject. The formation of knowledge is also a process of discovering and cultivating one's own moral consciousness. So I said, "Everything is ready for me. I am sincere and happy. "This is also the most basic epistemological model of China for two thousand years. Comparing Plato's and Mencius' epistemological models, we will find many things. First of all, both of them believe that the foundation of knowledge lies in people's hearts, and the formation process of knowledge is the process in which the subject consciously digs into the hearts. But there is a fundamental difference between the two: in Plato's view, the knowledge base in a person's mind is the idea that the soul comes from the real world before the person was born, that is, it comes from the objective world outside the person in the final analysis. In Mencius' view, the knowledge base in the subject's mind comes from talent, which is an innate "nature of destiny". It does not come from the external real world, but reflects the internal consistency between man and everything in the world, so it is the real world. Therefore, in Plato's mind, there is a clear boundary between the subjective world and the objective world, but there is no distinction between subject and object in Mencius. Secondly, because Plato has the boundary between subjective and objective, the fundamental standard of his epistemology is truth and falsehood, and the so-called distinction between right and wrong is also made on the basis of truth and falsehood. Mencius has no subjective and objective concepts, so there is no question of truth or falsehood in his epistemology. Only good and bad. Thirdly, due to the above two reasons, the basic direction of Plato's epistemology is from subjective to objective, denying subjective falsehood and approaching objective truth. The basic direction of Mencius' epistemology is from "material" to "mind", from natural person controlled by sensory material desire to moral personality controlled by thinking subject. Fourth, Plato certainly had thoughts about morality and calls for "goodness", but all these were based on his grasp of the "real world"; Of course, Mencius would not completely ignore people's objective grasp of things, but the value of this grasp is based on the formation of moral personality. In a word, Plato told people that we can grasp the real state of the world by our own wisdom, which is the premise of making the world better; Mencius told people that they can become saints and saints by virtue of their own wisdom. After becoming saints, the world will be mastered by people. There is indeed an essential difference between the two. It can be said that the two epistemological models, represented by Plato and Mencius, reflect two basic tendencies of human self-consciousness: one is the certainty of their cognitive ability to sort out various complex objective phenomena, and the other is the extreme concern for their moral ability of self-cultivation and self-improvement. And this difference of concern is the product of different requirements put forward by different social and historical conditions. Any knowledge paradigm is human's subjective creation, but any subjective creation is a response to seemingly silent historical requirements. For a knowledge system, history is always the "reason for absence". Once a basic epistemological model is formed, it will have a decisive impact on various knowledge discourse systems. If Plato's epistemological model is based on the literary concept of "imitation" in ancient Greece, then Mencius' epistemological model is the theoretical presupposition of the theory of "expressing ambition with poetry" and "appealing to the masses" in the pre-Qin period. The former takes cognition as the basic code for understanding literature, while the latter takes value as the basic code for literary interpretation. For cognitive code, literature exists because it enables people to deeply understand the world covered by diverse and complex phenomena. For example, Aristotle said that the difference between poetry and history is that "one describes what has happened and the other describes what may happen." "Therefore, poetry is more philosophical and meaningful than history, because poetry describes universality, while history describes special things." The so-called "philosophy" and "universality" both mean that poetry can reflect a wider and more real social and historical reality than history. Aristotle's point of view represents the highest level of literary concept in ancient Greece with "imitation theory" as the core, which has a very important influence on realism in later generations. For the value code, the foundation of literature is not what we know, but what we construct and realize. Literature is positioned as a means to achieve some utilitarian purpose, which is outside the literature itself. For example, Confucius said, "Prosperity lies in poetry, standing in ceremony and being happy." It is believed that poetry, like rites and music, is the basic means to maintain social value order and moral cultivation. In fact, cognition and value are two basic forms of human knowledge and two qualities that any cultural type must possess. The difference is that in different cultural types, their respective proportions are different, so their cultural structures are also very different. This is the difference between Chinese and western cultures, and it is also the basic difference between Chinese and western literary concepts. The epistemological basis of realism From the perspective of cultural inheritance and evolution, it is difficult to fundamentally change an epistemological model after its formation. However, with the constant change of social and historical needs, people's self-consciousness is also constantly adjusted, and the mode of epistemology will also change. Generally speaking, the original epistemological model is diluted into a background or a self-evident cognitive framework, and new factors are filled in it, forming richer connotations than the original model. Only under extremely special circumstances, an original epistemological model will completely give way to a brand-new model. In a sense, the Renaissance is a conscious recognition of the ancient Greek epistemological model. Therefore, despite more than a thousand years' history, the basic epistemological model that restricted ancient Greek culture has not died out, but has become the source of modern cultural thoughts that have been surging for four or five hundred years. Whether it is the natural philosophy and humanistic spirit in the sixteenth century, or the rationalism, empiricism philosophy and the worship of reason in the seventeenth century; Whether it is the passionate cry of the French enlightenment spirit or the grand system of German classical philosophy; Whether it is Balzac and Dickens' ruthless exposure of social reality or Marx and Engels' painstaking design of salvation prescription ... all these knowledge systems and cultural spirits presuppose a basic epistemological model, that is, the world outside people can be recognized and thus can be transformed. This is obviously in line with the ancient Greek epistemological model. The difference is that its connotation is richer and more complicated. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects: first, compared with ancient Greece, the modern epistemological model respects and relies more on rationality, that is, people's ability to understand and transform the external world. If the Greeks have full confidence, even put forward the slogan of "Man is the measure of all things" full of humanistic spirit, but still have enough respect for the mysterious forces of God, destiny, soul, Taiyi or the "first promoter", then modern intellectuals believe in human rationality more and more. "Rationality first" is the core slogan of "modernity project" in modern western countries. Secondly, modern epistemology has a better understanding of the complexity of the cognitive process. The Greeks seem to have an idea that once human beings master the origin of the world or the noumenon of all things, all problems will be solved. So their energy is more spent on philosophical ontology. Modern epistemology is more interested in the complexity of cognition itself. What they want to know is how knowledge can be trusted. Therefore, they fully estimated various internal and external factors that hindered the formation of knowledge. For example, Bacon's famous "four virtual images" theory comprehensively summarizes various factors that may affect the objectivity of human cognition. Third, we recognize the subjective factors in the so-called objective understanding. In the view of modern epistemology, even the understanding of the attributes of things often has subjective factors. This subjective factor is not caused by Bacon's "illusion", but inevitable in the cognitive process. For example, Locke's "three natures" theory of things, in which the second nature is usually understood as the objective attribute of things, but in fact it is the product of the interaction between subject and object, which contains subjective factors. These changes in epistemology show the deepening of human self-awareness-people have a clearer understanding of the complexity of themselves and the world. But fundamentally speaking, modern epistemology has not lost confidence in exploring the world, on the contrary, it has strengthened this confidence. They created or borrowed such things as subject and object, sensibility and reason, matter and spirit, time and space, illusion and truth, content and form, phenomenon and essence, affirmation and negation, opposition and unity, contingency and inevitability, entity and attribute, freedom and self-action, externalization and regression, self and non-self, pure reason, practical reason, unique entity, absolute identity, absolute spirit, alienation, objectification and so on. Through people's subjective efforts to understand and transform the world, and then establish the most reasonable social order-this is the great mission of the modernity project for hundreds of years since the Renaissance. The essence of this epistemological model is a spirit of objectivism, that is, the object itself is an immovable thing, and what happens is only the approach of the subject to the object. /kloc-in the 0/9th century, with the appearance and vigorous development of large-scale industrial production, great achievements have been made in natural science, and this spirit of objectivism has greatly expanded. For a time, it became fashionable to discuss the problems of humanities and social sciences with the attitude and method of natural science. This is mainly manifested in two aspects: one is that Darwin's biological evolution theory leads to the emergence of social evolution theory, and the other is the proliferation of positivism represented by Comte. According to this epistemology, there is no substantial difference between the research objects of humanities and social sciences and natural sciences, and both of them can be studied by purely objective empirical methods. Corresponding to this objective epistemological model, the concept of literature has also changed on the basis of ancient imitation theory: a literary trend of thought called realism by later generations has a great spread. The core viewpoints of realism are authenticity, typical and complete stories, exposure and criticism of society, etc. Let's analyze it from the perspective of epistemology. Authenticity in the realistic context, this concept is used to express the accuracy of literary works reflecting social reality. Different from the ancient imitation theory, the authenticity of realism requires the truth of essence, that is, it reflects the essence or universal law of social life. This concept includes three levels of presupposition: first, there is a purely objective social reality outside the subject. Second, this social reality can be grasped by the subject. Third, the value of literary works depends on the accuracy and profundity of the subject's grasp of social reality. The first presupposition ignores a basic fact: taking social reality as the subject of the object is also a part of this reality, and it is stipulated by this reality. Who determines the objectivity of social reality? It can only be the subject himself. How does the subject determine the objectivity of the object? The only possibility is subjective identification: I think it is objective. Obviously, the so-called objectivity here is based on subjectivity-there is no objective scale at all, and there can be no objective scale. When Balzac clamored to be a "clerk" in French society, he actually just showed a writing attitude. Whether his record is really objective is another matter. No one can prove this objectivity. The second presupposition clearly reflects the overconfidence of human self-consciousness in cognitive rationality in the context of modernity. In fact, from Hume to Kant, many philosophers have put forward reasonable opinions on the limitations of cognitive rational ability. However, as the mainstream of modern epistemology, it is still willing to believe in the myth that cognitive reason is omnipotent. If so far, cognitive rationality does guide people to know and use nature effectively in an ever-expanding scope, then in the field of humanities and social sciences, cognitive rationality only proves the fact that any attempt to equate this field with the field of natural science is doomed to failure. Therefore, people think that they have mastered the authenticity of social reality, but in fact they are just trying their best to construct an imaginary real world. The third presupposition, as a prevailing value standard in a certain period, embodies the hegemony of modern epistemological model-it has strong exclusiveness and standardization. This is an effective way for social structure and the established relationship between people to produce and control ideology. Through this presupposition, the concept of literary authenticity is no longer a pure form of knowledge, but a discourse construction with obvious political nature. It is at this point that there is an insurmountable gap between humanities and social sciences and natural sciences. Of course, people can also look for the "political nature" of natural science knowledge discourse, but in my opinion, it is very boring to do so. If we admit that it is a natural science, it means admitting its objectivity, and admitting its objectivity means rejecting the possibility of value intervention. What is "political"? As for the formulation that "science and technology become ideology", it is in terms of the objective effect of natural science, not in terms of ideology itself. Due to these three presuppositions, authenticity, the core concept of realistic discourse system, has no fixed reference-it cannot reflect the degree of correspondence between literary works and social reality. For example, we say that the Water Margin truly reflects the social reality that officials forced the people to rebel in feudal society. What does this sentence mean? If it is a common phenomenon in feudal society that officials force the people, how can such a society last for thousands of years? How does it gain the basis of legitimacy? If this is only an individual phenomenon, how can we talk about what is "essence" or "universal law"? It can be seen that the so-called "truth" here is not the inherent characteristics of the work, but the result of interpretation. For another example, critics often say that Lu Xun's True Story of Ah Q truly and profoundly reflects the ignorance and backwardness of China farmers before and after the Revolution of 1911, thus revealing the reasons for the failure of the Revolution of 1911. Is this judgment true? Regardless of whether Ah Q can represent the image of farmers in China at the beginning of the 20th century, only considering the reasons for the failure of the Revolution of 1911, should it really be attributed to the ignorance and backwardness of farmers? In fact, if the peasants at that time were "awakened" as they are now, perhaps the Revolution of 1911 would not have happened, let alone any failure or victory. The farmer has reason not to participate in the political movement that was not originally "aimed at liberating farmers", so he has all the more reason not to take any responsibility for failure. Give another current example. Critics believe that the novel White Deer Plain has unparalleled authenticity, which reflects the essence of some social life in the first half of the 20th century. In fact, this novel only breaks the "cold war mentality" caused by the long-term confrontation between the two parties, and deconstructs some myths with vivid narration. It is this that touches sensitive nerves and meets people's long-term expectations, so it has aroused widespread concern. Now we can reveal the true meaning of the concept of authenticity. We must admit that authenticity is definitely not a false concept. It has its own unique connotation, function and significance. In the past, the deviation of people's understanding of this concept was that they believed in the objectivity of this concept too much, and understood it as the degree of correspondence between literary narration and objective life, without considering the subjective aspects of literary recipients. In fact, it is the literary recipients who participate in the construction of the authenticity of the works. Let's discuss what the concept of authenticity means subjectively. When people evaluate the authenticity of a novel, a movie or a drama, what does he say? Experience tells us that they just express a general feeling or feeling. They will say, "Just like what happened around us." "It's like a paragraph cut from life." "It's so real and touching." Wait a minute. This means that authenticity is an effect at first, and its core is "like truth". For example, a novel is a fictional narrative, and its direct material carrier is written symbols printed on paper, but it can present a living world to the receiver and make people feel that the world is real, which is indeed a very magical thing. Its magic lies in that the formation of this effect is not an easy thing, which contains superb skills. Moreover, this effect not only gives people a sense of reality, but also allows people to devote themselves to it, pour their emotions, and finally get spiritual enjoyment. So this effect of literature has become an important value. People call this effect or value "authenticity". For most recipients, it doesn't matter whether the literary works really reveal objective things, they are only interested in that general feeling. Ordinary readers may not ask again, but critics and theorists will definitely ask: how did this effect of literature come about? What is its objective basis? This kind of questioning is completely reasonable, because not all literary narratives can produce this effect. Our answer to this question is that the main reason for the authenticity effect is that the experience presented by the work coincides with the experience of the receiver and the possible association range based on this experience, at least partially. The experience connotation that the receiver feels deja vu or can understand, experience and identify without experience will be judged as true by him. Therefore, all works with realistic authenticity, without exception, conquered people at the experience level. Whether this experience can be presented completely and skillfully by using language symbols has become one of the most important conditions for becoming a realistic writer. The more experience he presents that can be recognized, the more his works can gain the reputation of authenticity. The so-called "reflecting the broad social life" and "like a historical picture scroll" actually refers to the richness of this experience.

However, no matter realistic theorists, critics or ordinary readers who accept realistic literary concepts, they will not admit that the authenticity of the work lies only in its successful presentation of recognized experience. They all agree that the authenticity of realism mainly lies in revealing the essence of life. So the problem becomes complicated. Its complexity lies in the fact that the so-called essence of life is not a fiction that some people assume subjectively, but a fact that there are problems. For us, what we should do is not simply declare that the statement of the essence of life is false, but point out its true meaning. In this way, we must introduce an analytical method of "cultural context" or "field" to understand the concept of "the essence of life" as a category of cultural history and concept history. In other words, "the essence of life" is an angle or way for people to look at social life phenomena in a specific period and in a specific cultural context. People don't want to regard the phenomenon of life as a disorderly and disorderly experience flow that has happened, is happening or will happen, because then it can't be grasped by human reason. In order to grasp the phenomena in life, people must name and classify them according to certain rules, so as to make them orderly and coherent in people's consciousness. The rationality of Kant's transcendental rational principle and transcendental category theory can not be ignored. All kinds of existence presented in front of human senses are divided into essence and phenomenon, which is the result of human rational demand and transcendental comprehensive judgment. Life itself is not necessarily divided into what is essence and what is phenomenon. Moreover, human beings do not divide life in this way at any time and in any region. So "the essence of life" is an understanding of life phenomena, or a kind of giving and naming. This understanding or naming is strictly limited by historical conditions and cultural context. In this way, the authenticity of realism requires revealing the "essence of life", which is understandable: in the historical period when the realistic trend of thought occurred and matured, it was precisely the era when the epistemological model of "questioning the essence through phenomena" dominated. Whether in the field of natural science or humanities and social sciences, people are generally looking forward to mastering the essence of the world, because it can rise from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom and become the master of the world once and for all. In such a cultural and historical context where the epistemological mode is dominant, people will not only tirelessly ask about the essence of life, but also form some or several kinds of * * * knowledge about this issue. If the empirical world displayed in literary narrative can just confirm this kind of * * * knowledge or promote the formation of some kind of * * * knowledge, it will be considered to reflect the "essence of life". On the contrary, if this empirical world is far from people's understanding, it will be judged as false. For example, in the cultural context of the former Soviet Union or China before 1970s, Gorky's Mother has always been regarded as the most authentic model of realistic literature. But this novel seems to be too conceptual, which is perhaps the most lack of authenticity in Gorky's works. The "essence of life" revealed in this novel is actually the writer's recognition of some universal revolutionary consciousness at the end of/kloc-0 and the beginning of the 20th century, and it is the product of an ideology. This universal revolutionary consciousness exists objectively, but it is not "the essence of life". For example, novels such as History of Entrepreneurship and Sunny Days undoubtedly show the ideology that prevailed or dominated in China in the 1950s, or are the products of this ideology, but they are far from revealing the "essence of life". This is because any literary work is inseparable from the influence of ideology, so when presenting one life experience, it will inevitably cover or suppress another life experience intentionally or unintentionally. Works like Mother, History of Entrepreneurship and Sunny Days are just extreme examples. However, we do not deny that there does exist a trend that is independent of human will in a certain period and at a specific level of life, nor do we deny that writers may capture this trend and present it through a large number of experience descriptions. This trend in works may be called some kind of authenticity, but it is by no means universal, nor is it the only "essence". typical

The highest standard of realism theory in character description is typicality. This artistic standard is obviously based on the categories of individual and generality, individuality and * * *, particularity and universality in philosophical dialectics. Its essence lies in: expressing a certain * * * or universality through distinctive and unique personality. There is a good reason for this typical standard: for human thinking, everything is characterized by personality. People's senses are exposed to individual existence. After the general classification and naming of these specific individuals, generality, * * and universality are presented. Many realistic novels have indeed created characters with distinct personalities. Judging from the artistic effect, such a figure is indeed of extraordinary appeal and can live in people's hearts as long as an outstanding figure in life. Therefore, it is reasonable for realistic theory to demand the characterization of typical characters. At least for a long time. Therefore, if you want to convey some ideas through such a typical image, then such a writer is successful; It is debatable to say that these images reveal objective truth. Perhaps it is out of doubt about the myth that typical performance reveals the truth of life that modernist writers no longer dream of grasping the world through a character image. They directly use characters as symbols to express their experience, understanding or views on social life or life, and directly give them fables or symbolic meanings. Modernism no longer tries to hide subjectivity like realism, dressing characters like real people in life, but deliberately highlights this subjectivity, thus breaking the traditional dichotomy of literary expression and reproduction. This creative tendency of modernism represents the change of epistemological mode and reflects the further deepening of human self-consciousness-human thinking has finally broken away from the narcissistic mentality of self-sanctification. The integrity of narrative realism also has an important concept, that is, the integrity of narrative or the integrity of story. This concept was put forward as early as Aristotle's Poetics, the theoretical source of realism. He believes that tragedy is a long imitation of a complete event. Later classical opera theory advocated "three unifications" and also stipulated this integrity. Since then, novels and dramas have followed this principle, taking a complete narrative as the basic framework of the works, and all characters, thoughts and emotional experiences rely on it.