Ethical Literary Criticism: A New Approach to Literature Studies

Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism (2014), the crystal of ten-year painstaking efforts of professor Nie Zhenzhao, the founder of ethical literary criticism in China, offers a new approach to literature studies. The book, composed of two parts and appendixes including glossary and definition of ethical literary criticism, seeks to illuminate the working mechanisms of ethical literary criticism and its terminology and claims that literature takes its origin from ethics, and moral enlightenment or teaching is the primary function of literature. The first part discusses some basic theories and answers the feasibility and necessity of ethical literary criticism as a methodology. The second part demonstrates how ethical literary criticism works with his innovative reading of a series of literary classics. The appendixes are the list of terms and their definition and explanation. A striking merit of this book lies in its close combination of theory studies and critical practices.