Abstract: The new millennium has witnessed the emergence of a series of new approaches to literary criticism in the United States that have posed serious challenges to the dominant paradigm of symptomatic reading and the "hermeneutics of suspicion." Focusing on surface reading proposed by Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus in 2009, this article examines the background, basic ideas, representative works, academic responses, and recent development of this new interpretative practice. It argues that the rise of surface reading is closely tied to the external and internal crises that American literary studies have undergone in recent decades. With rapid changes in contemporary social, political and technological environments, the underlying assumptions and beliefs of literary studies have also been evolving accordingly. The shift of critical attention from symptomatic reading to surface reading and description in American literary studies might shed light on problems confronting Chinese literary critics and stimulate reflections on the domestic anxiety of theoretical construction.

Key words: symptomatic reading, hermeneutics of suspicion, surface reading, description, literary criticism