“Literary self-consciousness” is a significant period in literary history and also an important academic issue of “philosophy of literary history”. It indicates the historical point of maturity and independence of national literature and serves as a theoretical basis for men of letters to control the multielement dynamic course of literary self-consciousness to divide literary history. However, for nearly 30 years this issue has been regarded as a uni-connotation “issue of literary history” in disputes over “the very issue of Lu Xun”. To break the current deadlock, a different line of academic thoughts must be introduced to locate those seemingly different views “in place” and bring them “to their sense”. First of all, we must turn from “literary history” to “philosophy of literary history” to offer a set of universal theoretical references for study of literary history through academic reflection and logical sophistication of the complex implications of the “presupposition” of the “age of literary self-consciousness”. Then, we will have to reverse from “philosophy of literary history” to “literary history” to accurately define and specifically analyze connotations and characteristics of “the age of literary self-consciousness” of different times, different characters and different forms.

a history of Chinese literature; “the age of literary self-consciousness”; “the issue of Lu Xun”; philosophy of literary history; the process of multielement self-consciousness