讨论什么是文学理论,似乎可以从一个最简单、最直观的做法开始:让我们首先看看那些被当做文学理论的既有文字材料,具有什么样的性质。如果我们找一本文学理论资料集,就会发现,被当做文学理论资源的材料,是多种多样的。例如,我们翻开曾经有过很大影响的伍蠡甫先生主编的《现代西方文论选》,从目次上可以看到: Discussing what is literary theory seems to start with one of the simplest and most intuitive approaches: Let us first look at the nature of the established textual material that is treated as literary theory. If we find a literary theory dataset, we will find that there are many kinds of materials that are regarded as literary theory resources. For example, let us open the “Modern Western Literary Criticism” edited by Mr. Ng Poon-foo, who had a great influence once. From the list we can see: