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Imposed Interpretation: Querying Contemporary Literary Criticism



Author(s)

ZHANG Jiang

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.04.006

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

Imposed interpretation is one of the basic characteristics and fallacies of the contemporary Western literary criticism. It happens throughout the process when diversified theories of extra-literary origins and even scientific rules penetrate into the interpretative discourse of literature. Its symptoms include making biased judgments about a text’s value or meanings with a pre-taken stance, forcing new but absurd interpretation upon old classical works through reversed routes of cognition, re-locating a text by distorting its language or transplanting alien concepts. Imposed interpretation leads criticism far away from the ontological existence of literature, and now its methodological imperfections are getting more and more apparent, like the reversion between practice and theory, misplaced relationship between the concrete and the abstract, and the split between the part and the whole. For the discursive construction of contemporary literary criticism, it is necessary and essential to strive for systematical and balanced development. Criticism should on the basis of absorbing progressive elements of the times be conscious of its multi-dimensional growth and the integration of theories and practice. The future of literary theories lies in their practicality to literary creation.