On the afternoon of November 14, 2019, Wang Fengzhen , professor from institute of foreign languages, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, delivered a lecture entitled “the construction of Jameson’s critical method”. Faculty numbers, undergraduates, postgraduates and doctoral students of the School of Foreign Languages attended the lecture.The lecture was presided bydoctoral supervisor, Gao Jihai.
At the beginning of the lecture, Professor WANG explained how Jameson criticized the inheritance of previous achievements. Then, he pointed out that Jameson advocated a variety of methods to find their strengths and weaknesses, and tried best to develop a method of the theory of open critical inheritance of predecessors’ achievements. Later, Professor WANG explained how to resolve the contradictions between different theories and ideas. He noted that meta-critical and code conversion, although follow different routes, can be converted into code conversion under certain conditions. Both of them focus on methods and diversity of explanation. Finally, Professor WANG showed the formation process of James’ critical method – drawing on the medieval fable, learning Frye’s reinterpretation and giving a new interpretation to Benjamin.
At the end of the lecture, Professor WANG answered the questions raised by the audiences in detail, and discussed about meta-novel, meta-history, meta-critical and post-modernism, which benefited all the audiences.
This wonderful lecture deepened all the audiences’ understanding of Jameson’s critical method and inspired the listeners to construct their own critical method. (author: Yang Qing)
