Pages: 9

In modern society, human beings are still repeating the process of natural selection and ethical selection. As demonstrated by the history of human civilization, only literature, by means of moral scenarios and exemplars, can fulfill the goals of instructing, praising, or punishing people so as to help them complete the process of ethical selection. As literature offers guidance to humanity's ethical selection, analysis of ethical choices is an approach to the interpretation and critique of literary works. The ultimate goal of ethical literary criticism lies in the rediscovery of the ethical value of literature. Ethical literary criticism views literature—ancient or modern, Eastern or Western—as a product of ethics in origin and believes that its value lies exactly in its function to impart ethical instruction. In Chinese history literature has been playing the primordial role in spreading ideas and values, either of the revolution or of social reform and transformation.

Pages: 91

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 12

This chapter aims to introduce the theories of ethical literary criticism through revisiting the concepts of ethical literary criticism, brain text, the material form of literature, literature, and its relativity. It defines ethical literary criticism as a critical theory that approaches literary works and their authors from the perspective of ethics. Viewing ethics as the origin of literature, it argues that literature is a form of ethical expression of human experiences in historical times. The task of literature is to describe the issues related to ethical relationships and humans’ ethical choices, with an aim to provide guidance and instruction for human civilization.

Pages: 14

Chapter 2 begins with the review of the Darwinian concept of natural selection, and then proceeds to propose the concept of ethical selection. It points out that the theory of biological selection by Darwin is inadequate to explain the fundamental distinction between humans and animals. With reference to Darwin’s concept of biological selection, it places much emphasis on its counterpart of ethical selection and argues that it is through ethical choices that human beings are endowed with reason and ethical consciousness, and thus become ethical beings.

Pages: 13

This chapter offers a rereading of the origin of literature from an ethical perspective. It reviews a number of critical theories dealing with the question of how literature is formed, such as the mimetic theory, the cathartic theory, and Labor Theory. The focus of this chapter is on the discussion of labor theory conceptualized by Frederich Engels: that is literature, or arts in a broad sense, has originated from human labor. In disagreement with Engel’s view, it argues that literature is not the product of labor, but a product of morality, or a unique expression of morality in a given historical period. The chapter ends with the reiteration of the argument that literature is “fundamentally an art of ethics.”

Pages: 16

This chapter traces the moral traditions of ethical literary criticism. It begins with the distinction between ethical literary criticism and ethical criticism, and then moves on to the summary of the features of ethical literary criticism. The main focus of this chapter is on the discussion of the moral traditions of literary criticism dating back to Greek mythology and philosophy, developing through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 18th century, and flourishing in modern intellectual thinking since the 19th century.

Pages: 10

Chapter 5 makes a distinction between ethical literary criticism and moral criticism. In the conceptual system of ethical literary criticism, moral criticism lays much emphasis on “good or bad evaluation of a given literary work from today’s moral principles,” while the aim of ethical literary criticism is to uncover ethical factors that bring literature into existence and the ethical elements that affect characters and events in literary works, thus examining the ethical values of a given work with reference to a particular historical context. To illuminate this issue, the chapter uses Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an example to argue that it is a tragedy about ethical dilemma caused by the change of Hamlet’s ethical identity.

Pages: 7

Chapter 6 revisits the classical yet disputed question: what makes literary works canonical? By tracing the origin and history of the word “canon,” it analyzes the formation of canon and comes to the conclusion about the value of literary cannon. The chapter argues that the literary canon, naturally formed in the course of human civilization, embodies human knowledge of nature and society, and provides guidance for personal life and modern society. The act of reading and interpretation of literary canons play an important role in later generations’ response to literature and the rediscovering of classics’ ethical values.

Pages: 7

This chapter shifts the attention to ethical criticism in Western literary criticism. It first reviews a resurgence of ethical criticism during the 1980s, and then focuses on two rival approaches to ethical criticism as represented by Wayne C. Booth and Martha Nussbaum on one side and Richard Posner on the other side. By suggesting both sides failed to define the distinction between ethical criticism and ethical literary criticism, it argues for the high necessity of a coherent and consistent discourse on ethical criticism as a recognized literary critical theory.

Pages: 10

Chapter 8 traces the process of how ethical literary criticism as a critical methodology of literature emerges from the mutual influences of ideas from Western ethical criticism and the Chinese tradition of moral criticism and develops into a self-contained theory with its own theoretical framework, core concepts, and working mechanism. The chapter provides a full picture of how ethical literary criticism is highly reviewed and widely adopted in Chinese literary studies. More importantly, it suggests that as a literary approach, ethical literary criticism has also played an important role in social studies and interdisciplinary studies.

Pages: 60

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 8

Chapter 9 offers an interpretation of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex from the perspective of ethical literary criticism. The chapter starts with a review of two widely accepted interpretations of Oedipus’s downfall from a tragic hero who saved the Thebes from the calamity of the Sphinx to a criminal who committed incest and patricide: one is to view his downfall as the irony of fate and the other is to regard it as the consequence of his emotions—though not the motivation of his action—of sexual attachment to his mother and jealously of his father. In disagreement with these two interpretations, it unpacks the ethical implications of this work and reads the story as the development of man’s reason via an ethical allegory of patricide and incest. It argues that this play is an ethical tragedy, as Oedipus’s reasoning power, marked by his ethical consciousness, derives from his obedience to the ethical order of his time, the ethical taboos of patricide and incest in particular.

Pages: 15

The chapter starts with the recognition that under the influences of a variety of thoughts, Thomas Hardy’s ideas of ethics are far from a coherent and consistent narrative. It aims to discuss Hardy’s ethical concerns in his works in the following aspects: evolutionary ethics in Hardy’s narratives, Hardy’s vision of utilitarian ethics, Hardy’s ideas of justice, ethical criticism in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Hardy’s critique on egotism and Christian morality. It comes to the conclusion that although Hardy does not form a coherent and closely ordered system of intellectual thought, his view of morality is mainly based on the theories of evolution and utilitarianism.

Pages: 11

The chapter’s reading of The Old Man and the Sea is also a fresh note the book strikes. Although the interpretation of Santiago as a symbol of “code hero” is universally accepted, it introduces the Law of the Jungle into the analysis of the old man’s struggle with nature and comes to the conclusion that Santiago’s failure results from ethical confusion, or in other words, the failure of Santiago at sea reflects the dysfunction of the ethical rule of human society in the natural environment.

Pages: 8

This chapter reviews Eugene O’Neill’s trilogy of Mourning Becomes Electra against ethical literary criticism, aiming to provide a new interpretation of the tragedy. Following the terms of “ethical line,” “ethical knots,” and “ethical structure,” it reads the plot as built on the ethical structure of conflicts made up of specific “ethical knots,” which becomes the driving force of the tragedy. Reading the tragedy as one of the ethical crime of incest, it highlights the importance of ethical taboos in maintaining social and familial order in the worlds of ancient Greek and contemporary America.

Pages: 16

Chapter 13 examines the formation of Chinese New Poetry’s ethics during the May Fourth Movement. Citing Hu Shih as an example, it defines the ethics of new poetry as premised on the use of vernacular language in writing and illustrates the ethics of new poetry with Hu Shi’s poetic practices. To further explain the development of the ethics of new poetry, it moves on to discuss of Xu Zhimo’s poetry, with a focus on his breaking with conventions and following of Western content and forms, especially the style of the English Romanticism of the 19th century.