Abstract: "Literary self-consciousness" and "literary unconsciousness" were not issues that Cao Pi had realized, yet when contemporary people offer their critique of Cao Pi's literary views from these perspectives, there emerge such problems as "fitting Chinese cases into Western discourse", "interpreting ancient literature with contemporary ideas" and "fragmentation". In terms of literary discourse construction in the time of Jian'an, Cao Pi's "A Discourse on Literature" was the discourse construction of original literary criticism from the perspective of "state-oriented essays" and the discussion axis of "author consciousness", which was a total literary project based on national consciousness. Its concepts of "literary spirit", "literati", "essay", "style" and so on and its establishment of integral criticism were all meaningful and original literary criticism discourse, which embodied the complexity, ambiguity and integrality of the formation of literary views in the Han and Wei dynasties.

Key words: literary self-consciousness, state-oriented essays, author consciousness, construction of original critical discourse