密德登·麦雷(Middleton Murty)有一次把文学批评形容为“一种独立的文学艺术”。我们忍不住要说文学批评只享受到一种有条件的独立性。当然,有一个时期,人们研究任何一个作家时,把什么规则和理论全抛到九霄云外,批评家弄得只能完全信任自己的经验、喜爱和判断了。但是那些导致文学批评行为本身的各个阶段则是另外一种情况。在文学形式上,没有比文学批评更多地倚赖其它学问的了。 Once again, Middleton Murty described literary criticism as “an independent literary art.” We can not help to say that literary criticism enjoys only one kind of conditional independence. Of course, there was a period when all the rules and theories people put aside when they studied any one writer criticized the critics only with complete confidence in their own experience, love and judgment. But the stages that lead to literary criticism themselves are another. In literary form, there is no more reliance on other scholars than literary criticism.