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13&ZD128
Title: Ethical Literary Criticism: Oral Literature and Brain Text
Abstract: Text refers to the original words or symbols that convey meaning in certain forms. As
such, text is composed of communicable words or symbols and the carrier that could store and
display words or symbols. While the carrier is the form in which text exists, words and symbols
are the spring of a texts meaning. Only when these two elements are complete, it is possible
for a text to come into being. Any materials can act as carriers of text so long as they have the
function of recording words and symbols. Yet without carriers, there would be no text. It is in such
a sense that literature could be understood as a material form rather than a reflection of ideology.
Generally speaking, text appears in three basic forms of brain text, material text and electronic
(digital) text. Brain text, in its biological form, preserves human beings experience of perception
and cognition through memory. Before the invention of written symbols, there appeared a wide
array of brain texts with literary characteristics, such as myth, heroic epics, folk tales, and
historical narratives. Brain text is the prototype of the text of oral literature, yet it is not hereditary
and can only be passed down orally from one generation to another. In such a case, most of the

brain texts with literary characteristics are lost to the world with the death of their owners and
only a few are preserved in the form of material text.
Key words: Ethical Literary Criticism brain text materialized text electronic (digital) text
oral literature written literature
Author: Nie Zhenzhao is professor at the College of Humanities and chief editor of Foreign
Literature Studies, Central China Normal University (Wuhan 430079, China) and vice
president respectively of China National Foreign Literature Association and Chinese/American
Association for Poetry and Poetics. His recent research is mainly focused on English literature and
comparative literature and the study of Ethical Literary Criticism as theory and methodology.
Email: niezhenzhao@163.com

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23

written literature
(oral literature)
1

Ngugi wa
Thiongo oral literature
orature

10 2013 6

mother text

11

(Beowulf)
Hildebrandslied

brain text

12 2013 6

13

14 2013 6

Notes

A text is any discourse fixed by writing.Ricoeur 145

5text

246

15

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Works Cited
1991
[Fowler, Roger. Linguistics and the Novel. Trans. Yu Ning, Xu Ping and Chang Qie. Chongqing: Chongqing Press,
1991.]
Ricoeur, Paul. What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays
on Language, Action and Interpretation. Ed and trans. John B. Thompson. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge UP, 1981. 145-64.
1988
[Scholes, Robert. Semiotics and Interpretation. Trans. Tan Dali and Gong Jianming. Shenyang: Chunfeng
Literature and Art Publishing House, 1988.]
1980
[Zhong Jingwen, ed. Introduction to Folklore. Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1980.]