Strengthening online literary criticism is the consensus and expectation of critics and academic circles. Today launched Ouyang Youquan's "Breaking through the Three Barriers of Online Literary Criticism", which believes that only by breaking through some of the actual suspension dilemmas and conceptual cognitive barriers, and breaking through the three barriers, can we reach scientific, accurate and effective online literary criticism. This article was originally published in the Journal of Social Sciences of Jilin University, No. 1, 2022, thanks to the authorization of the Journal of Social Sciences of Jilin University.
The vast stock of works and the huge annual increment of mainland online literature, together with the relatively weak online literary criticism, have pushed the issue of strengthening online literary criticism to the academic frontier. Recently, the Central Propaganda Department and other five departments issued a document advocating "strengthening the work of literary and art criticism in the new era", which includes strengthening online literary criticism. In my opinion, contemporary literary criticism in particular needs to strengthen online literary criticism - this is not only because the weak online literary criticism and the popular online literary creation have seriously mismatched, but also because the "barbaric growth" of online literature itself has a large number of writers' works, complex literary phenomena and literary problems, which urgently need to be effectively answered by literary criticism and distinguished and supported by theoretical concepts.
For example, is the difference between online literature and traditional paper-based printing literature only the difference in media carriers, or are there other more important differences? In less than 30 years, China's online literature has accumulated tens of millions of works, and the annual increase of online novels alone has reached millions, is this the "Great Leap Forward" of contemporary literature, or the "popularity pile" of online pan-entertainment culture? Online literature is dominated by long-form novels, and genre novels have the most platinum writers and god writers created by fantasy and fairy tale themes, and they almost occupy all the lists of "Network Writers Rich List", behind the industrialization carnival jointly created by cultural capital and business models, is it the progress of the era of literature or the erosion of humanistic aesthetic values by the fan economy? In addition, the "digital survival" of online literature has brought about the "great shift of the position" of literary ontology, changing the traditional operating structure and functional form of literary creation, dissemination, acceptance, etc., and also making the logic of the former literary origin such as what literature is, why literature is, what literature is written, what literature is written, what literature is, how to literature, etc. In this process, how to continue the high-quality resources of literary tradition, take the road of integration and innovation, and let online literature create a historical node of literature in the new era along the target of "literature". Or is it based on the "road signpost" of new technologies, the commercialization choice under the default market regulation, and the "networked" literature that moves towards the supremacy of technology? Wait a minute. Similar problems can also be cited a lot, not to mention the Ganges sand number of online works, the vast majority of which have not received the attention of the critics at all, after "feeding" to the market consumption, let them fend for themselves and be depressed in the sea of the internet; there are millions of writers who work hard in the sea of the internet every day, and their wonderful stories of bitterness and hardship, ups and downs, and rarely get the attention, combing and summarizing of researchers.
Bai Gengsheng, vice chairman of the China Writers Association, said in an interview with a reporter from the "Lookout" news weekly reporter recently: "At present, online literary criticism and research have not done enough, and without theoretical intervention, it cannot enter a mature stage. "Online literary theory criticism is not enough to be a fact, without theoretical intervention, mature online literature is difficult to really set up a "portal" is also an unpublished theory, but the focus of the problem is that not colleagues in the literary and art criticism circles do not recognize the importance of criticism and research for the sustainable development of online literature, nor subjectively do not want to intervene in online literary criticism, but there are some de facto suspension dilemmas, as well as conceptual cognitive barriers. In my opinion, the current online literary criticism on the mainland needs to cross three barriers.
First, step over the reading barrier of works
Reading works is the premise of literary criticism, but reading online literary works inevitably makes readers feel "huge phobia" - the length of online works based on long-form novels is generally very long, the number of words is very large, and online reading screens, consuming eyesight, often let people fall into the dilemma of not reading without beaking, reading time-consuming and laborious. I remember last year a friend engaged in contemporary literary criticism asked me to recommend him a most influential online novel, I recommended the diving squid's "Lord of Mystery", whether it is clicking on subscriptions, monthly pass tips or long comments, short comments, post bar heat, the indicators of the novel at that time were at the forefront of the whole network, friends were very happy to hear, said that they must find to read. Then he asked, "How long is it?" I said about 4.5 million words, and he was immediately surprised, saying that if he finished reading it, it would not be a month younger! In fact, in online novels, the length of more than 4 million words is not uncommon, especially the historical novels of fantasy, immortals and overhead, a novel of three or five million words is the norm, such as "Douluo Continent" 2.97 million words, "Choosing Heaven" 3.14 million words, "Breaking the Sky" 5.32 million words, "Zaizhi Tianxia" 7.35 million words. Angry Bananas began serializing "Son-in-law" at the starting point in 2011, and has written 5.2 million words and is still continuing; the good bee's "Shuluo Wushen" was launched in 2013, and there is no sign of ending with 10.6 million words so far. The ordinary magician's continuous serial "Nine Stars Overlord Body Decision" has exceeded 11.97 million words, and the adapted audio novel has gained countless fans. Thunderstorm's "Starting from Zero" and the indifferent "Universe and Life" both exceed 20 million words. Some netizens sorted out the "ten longest online novels", the word count is more than 10 million, and the first "With the Farm to mix the world" reached a staggering 33.38 million words.
We know that "Dream of the Red Chamber" has 960,000 words and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has 640,000 words, which can only be regarded as a novella in online literature. It shows that "long" has become a major label for online novels and a reading barrier in front of literary critics. The only way to make comments is to "start from the Internet, start from reading", spend more time reading screen "stupid kung fu", use full eyesight, mental strength and endurance to "gnaw" this hard bone, and there is no other shortcut to go. Because there is not enough text reading, unfamiliar with network works, do not understand the way of online text creation and website marketing model, there is no right to speak in online literature, to do online comments and research, there will inevitably be "aphasia" embarrassment, or even "partition" of the hard wound. In the face of the problem of huge reading, there are two common practices: One is to scan the text, that is, to quickly browse the text, get its content outline, and grasp the main story line and the way of setting up people. Many young scholars have this "strong reading hard skill", they have good eyesight, smart brains, fast reactions, and can still say the ugly yin of the work after reading 80,000-100,000 words an hour. The other type is the reading method of fine combination, that is, selecting 30,000 to 50,000 words of works to read carefully, and then roughly reviewing other contents to understand the overall structure and story line. This may be effective for critics with rich experience, because through intensive reading, you can see the author's basic literary skills such as language skills and ideographic ability, saving a lot of time for conquering huge works, but still being able to make more objective analysis and judgment of the works. In any case, the threshold of reading off, to comment on it you must step over, because this is not only a matter of interests and hobbies, but the work and responsibility of the reviewer, only by reading it yourself, your comments can be "looking at the table and knowing, pulling the hair and discerning the bones" (Liu Zhiji), so that the comments are "as fair as a balance, according to the words as a mirror" (Liu Xun).
Second, break through the conceptual cognitive barrier
The development of online literature is too fast, and it is unpredictable and unpredictable, which leads to many people having some misunderstandings, misunderstandings or misjudgments about this literature and its reviews, and it is easy to have cognitive inaccuracies.
The first is the "garbage theory", which believes that online literature has no publishing threshold and caters to the market, only for the sake of "Brother Kong Fang", and most of the production is "garbage" or "saliva". "Will good things still be posted online?" "The Internet is like a wooden board on the side of the road, and anyone can scribble on it" is a common saying. Since online literature is not "literature", criticism has also become a non-academic useless work, and the study of online literature has been marginalized and even stigmatized, which is the afterglow of this concept. In fact, this is a kind of media discrimination that ignores the facts. It is true that the current online literature is still very immature compared with the traditional literature that has accumulated for thousands of years, and the overall quality is not high is an objective fact, but it does not mean that there are no good works in online literature. Many years ago, when discussing online literature, the writer Chen Cun warned us not to "think that works on the Internet must be unobservable", because "literature concerns people's hearts and minds can always be entered from various doorways." Whether it is creation or criticism, the "garbage theory" caused by media discrimination is extremely biased and harmful. We should admit that online literature has the phenomenon of "quality is not excellent", "stars are unknown for many months", "there are plateaus, lack of peaks", and it is necessary to take high-quality development as its ultimate goal; at the same time, we must also see the great achievements of online literature and give full attention and due evaluation to the excellent works in it, rather than indiscriminately blaming or "overhead" completely denying. In fact, if you can immerse yourself in the sea of the Internet and continue to read the online text, you will find that there are already many excellent works in the network literature, and after the senior critic of contemporary literature, Radar, after reading Guo Yu and Liu Bo's "The Legend of the Internet Hero I.: The Covenant of Ayers Rock", once praised "this is an annual phenomenon-level novel", believing that "its use of skills, the vividness of language, the fullness of details, the drama of the story, and the proficiency and accuracy of words have reached a fairly mature degree." ”。 There are many online novels of similar quality, as long as you read the realistic theme of "Haodang", the historical palace fight of the "Emperor Zizi", the fantasy category "Dafeng Da Renren", the Western fantasy category "Lord of Mystery", the urban fantasy "Steady Other Waves" and so on, it is not difficult to make your own judgment.
The second is the subjective preset of self-esteem. Traditional scholars rarely get involved in online literary criticism, on the one hand, because they do not want to leave their "acres and three points" to go to a new field to "start all over again"; on the other hand, they cannot put down the "elite" shelf of traditional critics, and they are not willing to condescend to do a "marginal scholarship" that does not involve the forest, thinking that this will make them lose their share. We see that in the field of online literature evaluation, there are only a few scholars who have "turned the course" from traditional scholarship such as contemporary literature, literature and art, and communication studies. In recent years, the post-70s, post-80s, and "Z generation" young scholars have successively intervened, and only then have they begun to change the state of online literary criticism. Of course, this is mainly due to the fact that the mountain and sea of online literature itself has constituted an "elephant in the house", so that the critics cannot ignore its huge existence, and many young masters, doctors and doctoral queens are optimistic about this "academic blue ocean".
There is also the cognitive limitation of the comment field. Due to the strong inertia of traditional criticism and the old concept of "how to be considered a commentary", some people feel that only comments published in the paper media (newspapers, periodicals, books) can be regarded as the results of commentary, and stick to the "field cocoon" and obtain a "sense of superiority". But in fact, the main position of online literary criticism is online rather than offline, online comments - Tieba, forums, Zhihu, Douban, reading Apps (such as "this chapter says") and various self-media comments, is precisely the most active and most concerned place of online literature reviews, the influence on online literature is more direct and obvious, professional critics and academic offline reviews, the impact on online writers, literary netizens and website operators is very limited. Therefore, to strengthen online literary criticism, it is urgent to strengthen the online position, and we should call on more traditional literary evaluators to go online to the Internet, be an "academic fan", track the phenomenon of online literature in a timely manner, speak out against online literary works and literary issues, improve the quality of online reviews, and form a new pattern of online and offline resource sharing, symbiosis of achievements, and shared responsibility.
Third, break through the standard barrier of online literary criticism
In addition, it is necessary to break through the standard barrier of online literary criticism. Literary criticism needs to have a standard of argument, and Lu Xun once called critics without standards "strange men". What is the standard of online literary criticism, it seems to be a blank, so that everyone is confused and inconsistent. In 2014, the "National Symposium on Network Literature Theory" held by the China Writers Association in Beidaihe took the criticism standards and evaluation system of online literature as an important topic. Subsequently, the National Social Science Fund has set up two major bidding projects on this issue, which shows its importance and urgency. We know that the standards of literary criticism have existed in ancient times, such as Confucius once put forward the standards of "thinking innocently" and "reaching out to words", Mencius used "zhiren on the world" and "intentions against zhi" to evaluate poetry, and Liu Xun put forward the "six views" evaluation criteria in "Wenxin Carved Dragon Zhiyin". In Marxist theory of literature and art, Engels clearly proposed that "aesthetic viewpoint and historical viewpoint" are the "highest standards" of literary criticism, and Mao Zedong put forward the "political standards and artistic standards" of literary and artistic criticism during the Yan'an literary and artistic period, and made the first and second distinctions in view of the social conditions at that time. Deng Xiaoping put forward the basic scale of "literature and art serving the people and serving socialism", and Xi Jinping made a clear definition of the standards, principles and methods of literary and art criticism: literary and art criticism wants criticism, not all praise or even vulgar praise, flattery, can not be applied to Western theory to tailor the aesthetics of Chinese, let alone replace artistic standards with simple commercial standards, completely equate literary and artistic works with ordinary commodities, and believe that "the thickness of red envelopes is equal to the height of commentary". These critical standards and literary and artistic propositions are suitable for all literary evaluations, and online literature is no exception. The question is, on this basis, is there any more specific, more targeted, and more operational evaluation standard for evaluating and judging online literature? Or should we add or adapt some new dimensions to the original evaluation standards? For example, compared with the traditional paper-based printing literature, online literature based on digital media to achieve "electronic expressionism", technical media in literary production, dissemination, consumption and functional effects play a vital role, since there is no network, literature does not exist, then commenting on online literature needs a new dimension of media evaluation? In addition, online literature is the product of the market, the power of cultural capital sometimes makes this literature stained with "copper smell", resulting in mercenary and ignoring the undesirable phenomena such as humanistic aesthetics and social responsibility; but at the same time, commercial forces can provide economic drive for the online literature industry, And Chinese online literature can achieve sustained high growth after 2003, producing online literature that is shoulder to shoulder with Hollywood blockbusters, Japanese animation and Korean dramas, and becoming a bright "business card" for Chinese culture to the world. To create the "Chinese era" of world online literature, business models and capital markets are indispensable behind-the-scenes drivers. Since this is the case, if there is no industrial measurement scale for online literature evaluation, I am afraid it will be difficult to be pertinent. Therefore, the establishment of evaluation standards that conform to the law of "literature" and cut to the characteristics of "network" and break through the barrier of online literary criticism standards as soon as possible will become an important part of strengthening the evaluation of online literature.
This paper is a phased result of the major bidding project of the National Social Science Foundation of China "Research on the Theory and Practice of the Evaluation System of Mainland Network Literature" (project approval number: 16ZDA193).
Source | Journal of Social Sciences of Jilin University, No. 1, 2022
The image | from the web
Forwarded from New Criticism of Literature