The prosperity of the exposé novels since the late Qing Dynasty triggered heated critical debate over the realistic features of these novels around the May Fourth Movement. Critics such as Feng Xi employed the term “personal account” in place of realism to categorize these novels, which, on the one hand, attached great importance to the realistic features of novel and, on the other hand, suggested that novels in the form of personal accounts with the author as the protagonist were not realistic enough. Following Feng Xi, Wu Mi and other critics also pointed out weaknesses of those realistic works, while Shen Yanbing particularly rejected the categorization and value of these popular novels as realistic works. On the whole, critics increasingly disqualified the realism of those popular novels, but the term personal accounts as a form proclaimed by Feng Xi not only addresses the question of realism by emphasizing the realistic features in the novels but also touches on the relationship among the realism, authorship and texts. Thus, the term used in criticism may also be viewed as both breakthrough and limitations of the critics who have been able to approach the novels from the perspectives of both traditional Chinese novels and western literary theory.