The capitalized "Theory" emerged from literary theories, but Theory's progress showed a gradual estrangement from literature. The "Theory" has entered almost every field from cultural semiotics to Foucault's school, but it apparently ignores the field of traditional literature. Some scholars of post- theories try to turn back to the pre-Theory period to change the trend while some scholars maintain that literature has controlled academics. The paper argues that the concept of "literature" and the relations between literature and theory should be reconsidered. The linguistic turn highlights the intransitivity of language, which leads to the ubiquity of literariness, and as a result, literary works as the working mode of language controls all the modes of writing encompassing theory and academics. Only when taking the above phenomena into consideration can the future of literary theory be properly evaluated.
Key words
"Theory" /
linguistic turn /
post-theory /
the intransitivity of language
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References
Culler, Jonathan. The Literary in Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Cunningham, Valentine. Reading after Theory. Oxford, U.K.; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
雅克·德里达:《文学行动》。北京:中国社会科学出版社,1998年。
[Derrida, Jacques. Literary Actions. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1998.]
Jakobson, Roman. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” Style in Language. Ed. Thomas Sebeok. New York: Wiley, 1960. 350-77.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
卡尔·马克思:《资本论》第一卷。北京:人民出版社,1975年。
[Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. 1. Beijing: People’s Press, 1975.]
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Simpson, David. The Academic Postmodern and the Rule of Literature. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.
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Footnotes
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