90年代伊始,一位美国学者这样概括过去10年的英美文学批评:“几乎在一夜之间,80年代文学研究中的历史主义就变得那么时兴。昨天如果有谁承认自己对文学的历史性感到兴趣,他就有被当作守旧派的危险,而今天他却可以洋洋自得地承认这一点。” 统治西方文艺学半个多世纪的形式主义,目前在大西洋两岸正受到猛烈冲击,女权主义批评、读者反应批评、文化批评、新历史主义、文化唯物主义等等,汇集成一股变革的新潮流,其主要特点是文学研究的重新历史化。 At the beginning of the 1990s, an American scholar summed up the Anglo-American literary criticism of the past decade: “Almost overnight, historicism in literary studies became so fashionable in the 1980s. If anyone admitted yesterday that he had a historical sense of literature When he is interested, he is at risk of becoming an old school, and today he can concede it with all his heart. ”Formalism, which ruled western literature and art more than half a century, is now being hit hard by both sides of the Atlantic, feminism Criticism, criticism of readers, cultural criticism, neo-historicism, cultural materialism, etc., a new trend of change is brought together. Its main feature is the re-historicalization of literary studies.