The Development of Marxist Shakespearean Criticism in China

Wei Zhang

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.20.08

Authors

Wei Zhang Shanghai University, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.20.08

Keywords:

China, Marxism, Shakespearean criticism

Abstract

Chinese Shakespearean criticism from Marxist perspectives is highly original in Chinese Shakespeare studies. Scholars such as Mao Dun, Yang Hui, Zhao Li, Fang Ping, Yang Zhouhan, Bian Zhilin, Meng Xianqiang, Sun Jiaxiu, Zhang Siyang and Wang Yuanhua adopt the basic principles and methods of Marxism to elaborate on Shakespeare’s works and have made great achievements. With ideas changed in different political climates, they have engaged in Shakespeare studies for over eight decades since the 1930s. At the beginning of the revolutionary age, they advocated revolutionary literature, followed Russian Shakespearean criticism from the Marxist perspective, and established the mode of class analysis and highlighted realism. Before and after the Cultural Revolution, they were concerned about class, reality and people. They also showed the “left-wing” inclination, taking literature as a tool to serve politics. Since the 1980s, they have been free from politics and entered the pure academic realm, analysing Shakespearean dramas with Marxist aesthetic theories and transforming from sociological criticism to literary criticism.

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Author Biography

Wei Zhang, Shanghai University, China

Wei Zhang is associate professor at College of Liberal Arts, Shanghai University. She is a member of Shakespeare Society of China under Chinese Foreign Literature Association, specializing in English and American Literature. She has published three books: Contemporary American and British Marxist Shakespearean Criticism; An Analysis of Shakespeare; The Narrative Art of Hemingway’s Fiction and about 30 essays in core journals of China, such as Foreign Literature Studies, Foreign Literatures, and Contemporary Literature.

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