He is currently a member of the editorial department of literary criticism of China Academy of Social Sciences, a professor at the Graduate School, and an expert in discipline evaluation of the National Foundation for Philosophy and Social Sciences, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and the National Publishing Fund.

I remember 1999 there was also a conference in Shanghai to review and look forward to the study of ancient world literature. At that meeting, I said that there were many problems in the study of ancient literature, and the reasons were many and complicated. However, whether it is the influence of this 3,000-year-old traditional historical inertia or the interference of various external factors over the years, it first acts on our researchers and people engaged in research, which makes our subjective spirit mutate, and then affects research concepts, research methods, research horizons and even ways of speaking. Second, the shrinking of our thinking ability leads to rigidity, paleness and lack of thinking, not to mention wisdom. The third is the extinction of the researcher's true temperament. In recent ten years, we have paid great attention to his theory in a small paper or a small book, but under the overall pattern of ancient literature, the big theory is still vague.

In view of the above problems and dilemmas in the study of ancient literature, I would like to talk about the fact that literature is a problem of human studies. Literature is a study of human, and the noumenon of literature should be human. How to understand people and human nature determines how we interpret literary works, understand authors, know the history of literature, and evaluate literary theoretical propositions, and also affects our thinking orientation and the level of observation and speculation. This also determines the cultural character of the paper or literary work you write. Therefore, this is the starting point and foundation for us to solve all problems, and we should understand many problems in our ancient literature research from the perspective of "people".

Patriarchal consciousness of consanguinity in literary research

To this day, we have only sects, but no schools. Because the dispute between sects will become a dispute between portals, and only the dispute between schools can really promote the progress of academic culture. The key point is that we all think we are orthodox.

Among human nature, the most basic thing is his materiality, that is, his natural animal attributes. This aesthetic desire of human beings also stems from the physiological reaction of animals and creatures to external things, from physiological reaction to psychological reaction, from material level to spiritual level. In other words, the aesthetic thing is an instinct. However, both western religions and ancient Confucianism in China want to split people into absolute binary opposites between divinity and animality, and oppose them, mobilize all positive education and negative punishment means, vigorously advocate human divinity, and suppress and deny human animality. The most typical thing is to "preserve justice and destroy human desires", emphasizing human divinity. This simple and ignorant way of thinking and cultural attitude still deeply affects our study of ancient literature until now. Of course, this influence is basically a hidden influence, but it is precisely because of invisibility that it permeates every cell and brings us a kind of inertia of thinking, leading to vulgarization, simplification and superficiality.

Over the years, our literary research has begun to make a breakthrough in a certain aspect. Especially novelists, began to dabble in personality problems in ancient novels. Of course, most of them are trite comments, which are simply explained from the level of "image" in writing. But from the perspective of cultural anthropology, from the perspective of macro-culture and root explanation, we haven't done it yet. As I said just now, human beings are a group of animals, and animal populations are groups linked by natural blood. When this blood relationship began to be deified, it formed our ancient political patriarchal system and became a political system. When we talk about the difference between China people and foreigners, we often have a cultural orthodoxy, that is "elegance", and "elegance" is "Xia Yan". What is "Xia Yan"? In layman's terms, it is Henan Mandarin. Of course, the orthodox position of Henan dialect has been replaced by Mandarin today. Who will read The Analects of Confucius in Henan Mandarin today? Everyone will think it is ridiculous, funny and disrespectful to Confucius. In fact, this elegance and nobility no longer exist, but this sense of elegance and this cultural orthodoxy are still deeply rooted in us.

This concept of consanguineous patriarchal clan system has a great influence on the study of ancient Chinese literature. For example, during the Sixteen Kingdoms period in history, we talked about the poems of the Northern Dynasties. In the history of literature, we quoted the words of Shi Shuo Xin Yu, saying that "celebrities crossed the river more than crucian carp", and those literati in the north all crossed the river with crucian carp, more than crucian carp. But first, this is what the novelist said. Second, many gentry in Shandong moved south, but how many? What percentage? No one has studied this. If we look at nine books in the old Jin Dynasty and the Spring and Autumn Period of the Sixteen Countries, we will find that many people crossed the river to the south, but most of them stayed in the Northern Dynasty. Wang, Xing and Cui Shi of Fenyang, Shanxi, and Cui Shi and Zheng of Qinghe all stayed in the Northern Dynasties. Moreover, the nobles in the Northern Dynasties were officials who mastered culture and thought. Let's take another look. These families are just Confucian classics families since the Eastern Han Dynasty. After Huan and Ling in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the ceremony broke down and the former scenery of their family was gone. After the decline of family fortune, they naturally have an instinct to restore and revive this family tradition. He has this natural psychological attraction. But the ruler of the sixteen countries, although he is a minority, must have said in his letter of succession that this branch of our family came to me from the descendants of the Yellow Emperor or Yan Emperor, so when I became emperor, I first found myself a good orthodoxy. Based on this psychological appeal, when this hero on horseback wins the world, he should also do a cultural purge, praise Confucianism, do a lot of education and so on. At the same time, it belittles the existence function of literature and thinks that literature is meaningless. They think that reading is to be an official, and reading is to preach the holy word. This shows that "there are more celebrities crossing the river than crucian carp" is a typical false proposition. Judging from this explanation, they think that ethnic minorities can't do it, and they think that the north can't. In fact, many gentry in the Northern Dynasties lived in the North.

Because of paying too much attention to the so-called orthodox view of consanguinity, the orthodox cultural view under the patriarchal clan system of consanguinity has emerged. The orthodox cultural view is a cultural view centered on Confucianism, and one of the disadvantages derived from it is that we always pretend to be orthodox today. Who is orthodox? A teacher's legacy is orthodoxy, and my teacher is handed down from generation to generation. In the study of ancient literature in China, until today, we have only schools, but no schools. Because the dispute between sects will become a dispute between portals, and only the dispute between schools can really promote the progress of academic culture. The key point is that we all think we are orthodox.

Similarly, under this blood clan system, our worship of ancestors will inevitably lead to the worship of sages. We deified the research object and alienated ourselves. In the mid-1980s, there was an upsurge of appreciation. You can have a look, including those appreciation dictionaries. There is not an appreciation article that says that the author of this article is not enough, and there are still some artistic defects and excesses. This is still the case today. At best, the criticism of a research paper only says that its research object has some limitations in history, and no one dares to point out its shortcomings in theory and creation. For example, Li Bai's "Climbing Mount Tianmu in a Dream", which everyone is familiar with, began to learn in middle school. Finally, I said, "Oh, how can I seriously bow and scrape to those high-ranking people? They will never be seen with a sincere face." To put it mildly, that's gilding the lily! Has anyone said that? Not only did no one say it, but because it was a poem by Li Bai, everyone said it was good, good, good, which was a taboo for the venerable. When we criticize, we often lack a historical, scientific and objective evaluation standard. We can only respect the saints, of course, deify your research object, and you are alienated from your deified research object. The same is true of our worship of everyone. For example, Wang Wei's poems were greatly influenced by Buddhism and became a theory of non-publication. But please check it. Have you ever analyzed a paper: How many poems does Wang Wei have? How much of his poems are influenced by Buddhism? In the poems influenced by Buddhism, why is it Zen, not Tiantai, not pure land, not gorgeous? So far, there has not been an article saying that no one has explained this problem. However, the influence of Zen on Wang Wei's poems has become an unpublished theory. This was put forward by a famous artist, and we all did as he said. The patriarchal clan system of consanguinity has brought us a blind worship, which makes us always blind in criticism, and we lack the scientific rationality of aesthetic criticism. We can no longer be called criticism. We just crawl under the door wall of the sage, unable to lift our heads and straighten our backs.

Literature returns to humanity.

In a certain social stage, with the rise of a new social class, a new style that meets its aesthetic needs will inevitably become popular and become the primary genre with a dominant number of works in a period. Moreover, with the continuous downward shift of the ownership of social spiritual products, new literary works are becoming more vivid, with larger genres, richer contents and freer creative forms.

In fact, the history of human civilization is a process in which a person constantly discovers and understands his animality and constantly reviews and corrects his divinity. In this process, there is a restriction and anti-restriction on human nature. There are multiple meanings in this. For example, after the Mongols entered the Central Plains, their powerful grassland civilization was an impact on the weak Confucian culture. Today, people who study Ming literature are still wandering in the new school, and even trace back to the Song school. No one went to the grassland civilization to see its influence on the Central Plains and Chinese culture, and the new things brought to us by the collision and integration of the two cultures. It can be said that without the influence of Mongolian grassland culture, it is impossible to have those thoughts in the late Ming Dynasty.

When we say that the history of civilization is a process of socialization, the patriarchal clan system will inevitably bring about a kind of autocracy and an ideological monopoly, that is, "the world is not a king's land." On the bank of the earth, is it not a king? "In the Han Dynasty, anyone was just a factor in the interests of the monarch and a manifestation of the will of the monarch. In the Han Dynasty, an official could only be a "shepherd". For ordinary people, you can only be herded, a group of sheep that have been released; It is this property that you are "guarded", watched and watched. The son of heaven went out hunting, and you were all hunted. In short, the people below are not people, only the emperor is God, and the property under God is God's property. In this case, art, from the pre-Qin period, became the exclusive of kings. It can be the entertainment of the temple banquet or the tool of rule, so it has become a vassal of politics and religion. Engels once said: When a class has economic and political privileges, it will definitely demand cultural privileges. At the earliest time, in the Analects of Confucius, Confucius said to Ji, "Eight-part essay is tolerable in the court. "I think that the system is ultra vires because it violates the hierarchy of etiquette. Later, after the Han dynasty, this hierarchy actually no longer existed, and it was exclusive to the king. So, you're just offering something to the emperor. Therefore, Ban Gu's "Fu on Two Capitals" says: "Or lyrical irony, or advocating virtue, loyalty and filial piety", and literature is exclusively enjoyed by the monarch. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, the economic privileges of aristocratic families have long been obtained. Wei Chu Cao Pi carried out the Jiupin Zheng Zhi system, and their political rights were also gained with the implementation of Jiupin Zheng Zhi system.

In the past, when we studied the literary history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, we probably always criticized the Jiupin Zheng Zhi system, saying that it excluded the poor and was a big family. But everyone forgot that it was only a revolution and progress to the imperial power of the Han Dynasty, which broke the dictatorship of the imperial power. After the imperial dictatorship was broken, new metaphysics came into being and literature became a genius. After the rise of a new emerging class, the gentry class, their aesthetic orientation, literary concept and new creative style are inevitably reflected in literary creation, forming a new aesthetic view. This new aesthetic view is, in the final analysis, a kind of human values. From Seven Sons to Twenty-four Friends, to Eight Friends in Jingling, to Bachelor of Dongdi, and so on, political upstarts have released their demands for cultural and literary rights and interests, as well as their demands for cultural and literary dominance as literary leaders.

Literature got rid of the vassal status of kings, broke through the high wall of temple literature, and entered aristocratic gardens and landscapes from the court. They quickly turned from lyricism in the Han Dynasty to metaphysics. After the Liu and Song Dynasties, the common people, a poor and lowly person, made a new breakthrough in Jian 'an period after rising with military force. Popular literature began to rise, the most typical of which was Xie Lingyun. He said: "There is only one stone in the world, and the sword alone has eight fights. When we fight, everyone in the world fights", which vividly reflects the mentality of the nobles in cloth clothes who rise by virtue of their talents. Therefore, after Liu and Song Dynasties, Seven-character Yuefu became popular. The Sui Dynasty realized the imperial examination. Seven-character Yuefu was popular in the Tang Dynasty, and on this basis, it was further improved, and poetry and fu were selected as literati. At this time, literature has moved from the garden of aristocratic families to the broader social life of civilians, and the theme and genre have also begun to change. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, with the development of urban economy, we continued to study ci, qu, drama and novels. From the perspective of novels, from classical Chinese notes to legends, to scripts, to parody, from stories about history to novels about the world, it can even be extended to the new citizen novels of Hubei writers Fang Fang and Chi Li in the new century.

You can take a look, from the earliest exclusive cultural privilege of the monarch to the privilege of literati, to the privilege of literati among the civilians, to the * * * of ordinary urban citizens and the * * * of the present society, which is what Marx said, literature has changed from a privileged thing to a social public space and a public right. As far as the appreciation or consumption level of literature is concerned, it has changed from one person and one family to the whole society, and it is a pyramid and a regular triangle in personnel. Similarly, from four characters to five characters, to seven characters, to drama, to words, to music, to drama, to novels, the style is getting bigger and bigger, and it is also a regular triangle. These two regular triangles correspond to the most important creative class and the most important consumer class respectively. After the two overlap, I think of generations of styles, and I can read a taste here. This process is precisely the historical process of our ancient literature from a privilege to its standard, that is, from privilege to democratization and popularization.

When we overlap the two triangles, we find that at a certain social stage, with the rise of a new social class, there must be a new style that adapts to its aesthetic needs and becomes the primary genre with the dominant number of works. Moreover, with the continuous downward shift of the ownership of social spiritual products, new literary works are becoming more vivid, with larger genres, richer contents and freer creative forms. From this point of view, four-character poems have become history in the history of literature. In the Southern and Northern Dynasties and in the Tang Dynasty, they were also antiques in the hands of some literati who showed off their technical strength. As for the Qing people, he wrote four more words, ancient style and ancient Yuefu, but it was just a feeling of decline for all ages. It is not the main body of literature in this period, nor the mainstream of literature in this period.

Literary research can't lose its concern for people.

The mainstream style and writers in a period are not necessarily the peak of literature in this period, which does not necessarily indicate the development direction of literature in this period, and does not necessarily represent the true style and historical trend of this period.

As far as the whole history of literature is concerned, literature has a process of returning to noumenon and humanity, which puts forward requirements for our ancient literature researchers, among which our basic cultural attitudes such as critical stance, research methods and evaluation standards are outstanding.

First of all, do we adopt objective and scientific historical aesthetic criticism or personal appreciation criticism in the study of ancient literature? In fact, our understanding of academic history and literary criticism is very unclear. For example, Mr. Hu Shi has made great contributions to novels and operas, and he has improved their status. But let's take a closer look at Mr. Hu Shi's academic theory. He promotes novels and operas, which used to be considered vulgar. First, he thinks they are not vulgar and elegant, and he promotes them. It's like saying that there is a country girl with curly hair. Mr. Hu Shi said, look, she has curly hair. This is a foreign lady! He didn't acknowledge the progressiveness of novels and plays in history. In fact, in ancient times, in novels and among novelists, he also wanted to raise the bar. The prefaces of traditional operas all say that it (drama) has the function of correcting history and educating people, and it is close to "history".

We didn't understand this problem until today. Our aesthetic criticism is still carried out on the classic and elegant level. For example, Nalan Xingde's words. Nalan Xingde's ci is really beautiful, and its height is definitely not less than that of Song people, nor less than that of Li Houzhu. However, Nalan Xingde's ci is also the death point of Song Ci in the history of literature, and it is not the mainstream in the literature of Qing Dynasty. Another example is the Han Yuefu. "The author doesn't have to say five ancient words, but there is an ancient Yuefu that must be done." Why is it difficult to make ancient Yuefu in Han Dynasty? It is precisely because of the primitive nature of ancient Yuefu that it directly infects people's emotions through the form of music. The emotional type is clear, but the emotional tendency is vague and uncertain, so everyone can be directly infected. You can associate freely through your aesthetic association and analogy association, which is precisely the unique state formed by Han Yuefu under primitive conditions. As our philosophical theory says: the simpler the connotation of the concept, the greater the extension; The richer the connotation, the smaller the extension and the single directivity. Han Yuefu, precisely because of its primitive and hazy, has a very large extension, which will arouse people's full imagination, and it is very profound and delicious. After Jian 'an, poetry will not work. They are too simple, the simpler the simpler.

In fact, the aesthetic effect of Han Yuefu is the objective aesthetic effect brought by its primitiveness in the historical development process. If we break away from historical criticism, we will say: the ancient Yuefu was good, but the latter was not. Far from being comparable to ancient Yuefu. That's your attitude and position, not from the standpoint of history and science, but from your personal and personal criticism. These people, including Tao Yuanming, are at the peak of a historical period. However, the mainstream style, mainstream writers and writers with the highest achievements in a period are not necessarily the peak of literature in this period, nor do they necessarily indicate the development direction of literature in this period. We used to pay too much attention to the fact that a writer can represent the peak of creation and art in a period, but he does not represent the true style and historical trend of this period.

When we ignore the process of human civilization, it will inevitably bring some misunderstandings. Today, we are in a commodity economy society. When our literature loses its concern for people, when you write a paper in an ivory tower with that so-called pure academic concept, who will buy your account except responsible editors, typists and typesetters when you hand over the products to the society? You don't care about people. What you do in your study all day can neither enlighten your thoughts nor bring wisdom to others. It doesn't mean anything to the whole cultural construction, so who wants your things? In fact, this personalized learning style inevitably leads to the self-exile of our discipline. I have talked about the crisis of our existence and the crisis of ancient literature before. The emergence of these problems is actually because we lack a scientific rationality to know the outside world and ourselves.