Wang Shouren and the Study of British Literature in China

The study of British literature in China played a significant role in societal development of the 20 th and 21 st centuries. As a prominent scholar in China, Wang Shouren first attracted the attention of global academic community with his study of the 19 th century English unacted drama in the 1990s. In his almost forty-year career of teaching and research on British literature, Wang has made a remarkable contribution to the advancement of British literary studies in China by broadening the horizon of research on classic British authors, promoting the study on contemporary British literature, and revisiting the development of literary theory in Britain. In his works on British literature, he introduces a research paradigm combining social criticism and aesthetic criticism, examines contemporary British literature with an emphasis on representation of societal development, and provides new perspectives for the study of British literary theory. Focusing on the Chinese elements in British literary works and adopting a comparative approach in editing textbooks, Wang Shouren demonstrates keen observation and creative intelligence of Chinese scholars, and establishes himself as one of the most influential scholars of foreign literature studies in China.