Literary Theory

Literary Theory is the masterpiece of Natsume Soseki, a modern Japanese scholar and national writer. It is the author's lecture in University of Tokyo, and is also the first literary theory work written from the angle of psychological aesthetics and reader's acceptance. It has both text characteristics and worldwide extensive influence.Literary Theory can be said to be a collection of British literary criticism. From the social psychology and the aesthetics, Natsume Soseki thought that the content of literature was composed of two parts of the 'understanding' element including concept, reason and impression (expressed with F by Natsume Soseki) and the emotion element (expressed with f by Natsume Soseki), and created the literary formula of F+f. In this way, he started his view of literature.Many Japanese writers and scholars later gave high comments on the Literature Theory.They pointed out that, works, like the Literary Theory, with the self-contained literary conspectus, were unique in Europe at that time.