Current situation and future trend of ethical literary criticism

Since its being put forward by Professor Nie Zhenzhao in June, 2004, ethical literary criticism has widely attracted people's attention with its unique perspective and originality. At present, Professor Nie has worked out the theoretical system. Other outstanding Chinese scholars have helped to develop its theories. More and more foreign literature researchers have applied this theory to their analyses of all kinds of literary works. As far as we see it, there are generally three problems, namely, undifferentiated use of the terms of ethics and morality; confusion over ethical literary criticism and moral criticism; lack of further classification of related terms. In consideration of these, it is safe to predict that the future trend of this approach will display four features: redefinition of ethics; organic combination of ethical literary criticism with other critical approaches; construction of the key terms of ethical literary criticism and moral criticism; continuous appearance and definition of related terms.