Section 2 Writing of Literary Criticism

There are roughly four steps in the writing of literary criticism: reading-choosing a topic-commenting-writing.

(a) reading reading for literary criticism, is the process of possession of materials, investigation and research. Only through reading can we lay a solid foundation for writing. 1. Reading range. Judging from the writing requirements of literary criticism, reading should be combined with both point and surface and depth.

The so-called "point" combining point and surface refers to the work. The so-called "face" refers to the writer's life, his other works, the works of other writers and so on. Here, the reading of works is the most important, which is the most important basis for obtaining the right to comment. Only by reading the works can you know the object of your comments like the back of your hand, get to the point and avoid one-sidedness. The so-called combination of depth and depth means that the works should be read deeper, drilled deeper, and deep enough to produce feelings. In order to have depth, you should watch it several times. Engels read La Salle's Flantz von Bauhinia Root at least four times. In Ferdinand Lasalle, Engels said, "It will take me a long time to express myself before I can have a completely fair and critical attitude" and "make detailed comments and clear opinions after reading it". For another example, Lenin read the novel five times in a summer day in order to comment on it. "Every time, I can find some exciting new ideas in this work." (Lenin's Literature and Art, p. 897) Mao Zedong also said that A Dream of Red Mansions should be read five times, and if you don't read it five times, you will have no right to speak.

It can be seen that superficial reading is impossible. For the object being commented, we must study it thoroughly and be close to the work as we treat people. Look at other works and materials simply, just browse and have an intuitive impression, otherwise, you can't guarantee the depth of the "point". 2. Reading methods. Generally, the step of "whole-part-whole" is adopted. First, generally speaking, it is to read it from beginning to end. Get a preliminary impression. Second, the part is to carefully read, analyze and study the important parts, deepen the impression, find the characteristics (or problems), and initially form opinions. Third, on the whole, we should have a complete understanding of the essence and make our own judgments on the tendentiousness and artistry of the works. In the process of reading, you should take notes in time. There is a "comment method", that is, reading and commenting with a pen in one hand. Such as Jin Shengtan's comments on Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is also necessary to cultivate the ability to retell excerpts through reading. This is because the content of the work is often summarized in the comments, which is the basis for the comments.

(2) Deciding the topic The so-called deciding the topic is to select and determine the topic (center) of the review on the basis of reading and collecting materials. The topic selection is also called "topic selection".

Beginners who write literary criticism often make the following mistakes when deciding on a topic: First, they judge for the sake of evaluation, without aiming at the goal. A critic takes a work casually, without a clear goal, and comments without serious thinking. Second, be greedy for perfection and cover everything. From the beginning, I wrote such a big topic as "On XXX's Novel Creation", but I couldn't write the future, which was mediocre and superficial. Third, lack of new ideas, platitudes, follow the footsteps of others and learn from others. How should I decide the topic? First of all, choose the right work. There are standards for who chooses which works. The criteria are:

(a) the value of the work. When you get a work, you have to weigh it and ask yourself: this

Is work valuable? Is the value worth evaluating? Chernyshevski, a Russian literary critic, said, "If you want to be a thorough person, you should pay special attention to the value of your works, instead of sticking to whether you think the works of the same writer are good or bad before." This shows that literary criticism should evaluate literary works, and the value of the works themselves is an important basis for us to decide whether to comment or not. The so-called value of a work refers to its aesthetic value, that is, the ideological and artistic level of a work should be very high or relatively high; In addition, it is a certain kind of work that represents a noteworthy tendency, or a bad work. Both kinds of works are worthy of comment. Because a good book review can improve readers' aesthetics, let readers enjoy beauty, and let the author realize his own characteristics, develop in a good direction and improve one step; Bad comments can prevent a slight delay, remind the author, and let the reader know the false, the evil and the ugly.

(2) the needs of reality. Realistic needs refer to the needs of national cause, people's life and social development. As a critic, we should assume the responsibility of commenting on any works that need to be commented in reality.

(3) personal expertise. You should choose your works according to your hobbies and specialties. In other words, you should choose what you have learned, what you are sure of, what you have learned and what you can comment on. Especially for beginners of critical writing, we should foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, otherwise it will be difficult to evaluate and evaluate well. Second, we must set a good center. There are two principles to determine the theoretical center of evaluation: First, different genres should be treated differently. Different schools should set up comment centers from different angles. For example, the criticism of narrative literature should focus on characterization and contradictions. The critical angle of lyric literature should focus on artistic conception and emotional expression. Second, innovation is very important to have true knowledge. The center of criticism must be based on one's own unique views and opinions on the works. Because it is your own insight, you can avoid similarities, innovate and judge a new level. For a work, whether it is commenting on characters, plot arrangement, a certain detail, overall structure, ideological significance or language style, critics need a pair of discerning eyes. There are two ways to cultivate "eyesight": one is choice. Select meaningful points in the work to evaluate. Because this is the way the author chooses the material when writing. Lu Xun said: "The task of a correct critic is to choose meaningful points, point them out, and make that meaning particularly clear and expanded." You should be able to skillfully select meaningful points from critical works. At first, you can choose some famous articles, determine a specific scope by yourself, and select some meaningful points. If we evaluate Lu Xun's novel Zhu Fu, we can determine a range: comment on Xianglinsao's image-building skills. In this way, we can't just choose from the general aspects-what kind of typical Xianglinsao is, where is the success, and so on. It can also be selected from local aspects-how Lu Xun describes Xianglinsao's eyes, language, personality and so on. The second is screening. Exercise your discriminating ability mainly from three aspects: First, what are the meaningful points to be selected and what are the meaningless points to be discarded; Second, what is my own perception of the work, and what are the old sayings and platitudes that pick up people's wisdom; Third, when commenting, what you can control and what you do is too big and too difficult. In short, the topic selection is a "leap process" from perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge on the basis of reading works and through the thinking of critics. To successfully complete this "leap" process, we need to make great efforts and deep efforts. Some critics can accurately determine the topic, not overnight, "Rome was not built in a day."

(3) Comments Most comments are based on the following five questions:

1. What does this work say?

2. What does this job mean?

3. How is this work represented?

4. Is this work well expressed?

5. Is this work worth creating?

The first comment only deals with some superficial phenomena of the work. We should give correct answers to who, what, where, when, why and how. The purpose is to clarify the specific content reflected in the work and connect the author's experience with his own.

The second comment is about defining the theme of the work. This ability can only be possessed after having rich experience in reading and appreciating literary works. A correct comment on the theme of a work should generally be from: 1. Content interpretation; Second, feel the feelings; Third, language adjustment; Fourth, the author's intention and other four aspects to understand the work.

The third comment is about the author's skills in getting the expected response from readers. Skills are the means and tools for authors to achieve their goals. As a literary work, unless these special skills can be valued and applied, readers can't fully understand and evaluate it. Evaluating the expressive skills of works is of interest to both readers and authors.

The fourth critical question is to evaluate a literary work's ability to communicate with readers fairly and correctly on the basis of studying the first three questions. This evaluation is largely subjective-the critic's personal feelings about this literary work. However, if he can correctly judge whether the author's artistic expression is successful or not, and make due evaluation on the technical application of his works, he will get the approval of the author and many readers.

The fifth comment is about the value of the work. A literary criticism can only be called a good literary criticism if it correctly points out the cognitive value and artistic value of the work. "In addition to bringing pleasure, expanding knowledge, providing new insights, promoting positive actions and promoting a more correct attitude towards life, literary works also gain writing value, as well as the description of language (through the description of color, shape, light and shade, scene), the grandeur of thought, structure or language, the historicity (the description of another era) and the rhythm existing in many essays and poems." (William W. West, improving his writing skills)

The critical works published in literary criticism, literary newspaper and other newspapers provide us with model essays for studying critical works, from which we can learn useful critical methods.

(D) Writing literary criticism is argumentative. It must have the general characteristics of argumentative writing, which is the same as other argumentative writing. But because it is a comment on literary works, it is different from other argumentative papers, but it should be a little literary, which is its personality. Therefore, a good literary criticism should not only have the characteristics of general argumentation, but also pay attention to literariness.

1. Have a correct and distinct point of view (argument). When we comment on a literary work, there is always a basic view: is it good or bad? Is it basically good and has shortcomings, or is it basically bad but still has some merits? This basic point of view is the central point of the article, which must be correct and distinct.

2. Have accurate, sufficient and convincing arguments. The arguments of literary criticism should mainly be found in the characters, plots and artistic descriptions of the works, that is to say, the characters, plots, artistic descriptions and language use of the works should be deeply and meticulously analyzed. In order to quote enough materials to illustrate their arguments as arguments. These arguments must be accurate and reliable, and cannot be taken for granted, misinterpreted or even taken out of context, so that they are inferior to the rest.

3. Scientific logical reasoning methods should be used. Whether to use induction, deduction or analogy should be carefully considered. Moreover, whether to write an argumentative essay or a rebuttal comment needs to be determined according to the purpose of writing, starting from the reality of the work and starting from the needs of readers.

4. Have the contemporary consciousness of literary criticism, and be able to write according to the laws and characteristics of literature in combination with work practice. We must use our knowledge of literary theory, literary history, aesthetics, linguistics and rhetoric.

Specific analysis of body works. Otherwise, it will be difficult to convince people by saying layman's words in articles or making unrealistic demands on literary and artistic works.

5. Literary ideas are constantly updated in creation, so the theories and terms of literary criticism are also constantly updated. Therefore, we should strive to make the language of criticism accurate, rigorous, scientific and theoretical, and at the same time, it should be distinctive, novel, literary and artistic. Through the use of language, the reason, emotion and text of comments should be perfectly combined.