Abstract

From the end of the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, the development of Western literary theory witnessed three important stages: from "author oriented," to "text oriented," and then to "reader oriented." Each of these three historical stages generated several important theories and schools, each with its own advantages, with infiltration and cross-thematic debates from time to time. However, we can now form the judgment that, after one hundred years of development and evolution, the overall pattern of Western literary theory has undergone profound changes. Starting from the 1960s with the rise of postmodernism, especially the doctrine of deconstruction as a symbol, contemporary Western literary...