Important Events in the History of Cyber Literary Criticism

This chapter reviews important events in the history of cyber literary criticism, including people’s criticism of the “Mu Zimei phenomenon,” the controversy over Zhao Lihua’s poems, the debate between Han Han and Bai Ye on literature written by the “post-80s generation” writers, scholars’ debate over cyber literature in 2003, rankings and other activities for the evaluation and promotion of cyber literary works, and a series of seminars and discussions on cyber literature. This chapter then discusses scholars’ critical thoughts on a few issues of cyber literary criticism. It argues that fundamental changes have taken place in the conceptualization of literature as a result of the development of the Internet. As a result, there are a few issues particularly important to cyber literary criticism, including the cultural aspects of cyber literature, the competition between different groups of critics, the exploration and adjustment of evaluation criteria for cyber literary studies, and scholars’ reflections on the value and limitations of cyber literary criticism.