By tracing the development of literary studies in the 20th century, this article distinguishes “Theory of Literature” (or “Literary Theory”), “Theory” and “Post-theory” by their distinctive attributions in varied historical and cultural contexts, and then further demonstrates their theoretical paradigms, namely, the modern paradigm of formalism, the post-modern paradigm of French Theory, and the post-theory paradigm after theory. The author argues that the “literary theory” was formed in the framework of modern humanities, emphasizing the linguistic and aesthetic aspects of literary studies, and therefore it was actually a product of modern disciplinary differentiation and specialization. As for “Theory”, it emerged in the context of human sciences and was beyond the boundaries of the literary studies. With “Politics of Theory” as its core, it gave rise to a “grand theory”. Compared with them, “post-theory” seems even more complicated. Through the theoretical development of the two former phases, it is characterized by both reflexivity and multiplicity.

Being in accord with the great transformation of modern Chinese literature, modern Chinese literary theory is formed against the backdrop of changing modern cultural values in modern China. The multi-roles it has played in modern Chinese society include cultural intervention, social act, and construction of anesthetic experience and literary appreciation. It thus, through a dynamic dialogue between authoritative Western literary theory and traditional Chinese literary theory, manifests distinct features of modernity: vernacular written language, academic institutionalization, cultural explicitness, revolutionary radicalness, Westernization of inner system, and implicit Chinese traditions. It also has developed to a new stage where the localization of Western literary theory in China needs to be constructed and addressed.

The paper explores the question of the Chinese language epic, a topic frequently discussed in academic circles throughout the 20th century. Over the past century, many academics of an older generation have put forward ideas for resolving this issue, which arose from the perspective of the origins of Western literature. But careful examination indicates that all the hypotheses and explanations do not faithfully or fully adhere to the facts themselves. This academic affair arose in the course of eastward spread of Western influences when numerous scholars tried to explain the origins of Chinese literature by transplanting to Chinese soil a model of the origins of Western literature. The author doubts the logic of taking such a model as a universal interpretative framework for the historical development of literature or using epic poetry to explain the sources of Chinese literature. Underlying the fact that their academic consciousness was not based on a profound understanding of the facts and materials was a blind and unreflective pursuit of Western discourse; there are lessons to be learned from this.

Researchers disagree on the values and status of literary criticism in the Tang dynasty. Therefore, there have been demands this issue to be explored in greater depth and comprehensively analyzed. Poetics in the Tang dynasty was characterized by a process of “standardization” that witnessed a change in focus from “what to write” to “how to write”.

Categories of painting had a special role and significance in criticism of the ci poetry. The mutual borrowing and the mutual facilitating among the different branches of arts are the common phenomena in the history. In ancient times it was common for critics to talk about works of one kind of art in terms of the theory of another kind. In their discussion of ci poetry, the critics borrowed much from the theory of painting, including such categories as shenpin (the magical work), nanbeizong (the northern and southern schools), goule (outlining) and shese (coloring). They drew on these to convey in a subtle and graphic manner what would otherwise have been hard to put into words. Such reference to painting in ci poetry criticism is a fascinating part of critical theory in ancient China; it deepened the content of poetics with regard to the ci and played an important role in its theoretical development.

Law is an important category in the ancient Chinese literary formal criticism, and it reflects the ancient masters’ thoughts about nature and universe and gets enriched and extended as time passes by. Even though law is more basic and concrete than images and emotions, it plays such a crucial role in writing that it becomes a prototypical category. The meanings and implications of law become salient when it is put into the social condition of ancient China, on which the ancient Chinese literary criticism is based. Hence, law is not only a technique in writing, but also a historic concept with both natural quality and social quality. The former is based on the order of heaven, earth and nature while the latter on rituals. Law comes from dao 道 and depends on li 理; it is revealed in Style and embodied in Case. It is closely related to literary principles and helps to highlight the native characteristics of traditional Chinese literary criticism.

Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, there formed two theoretical camps in the circles of literary criticism: the camp of pro-commentary and that of anti-commentary. Based on the research of the compilation of Siku quanshu and evaluation on commentary works, this essay aims to explore the ambiguous attitude of the Qing authorities towards the study of commentary, and then further study the reasons, cultural connotations and the academic influences of this finding.