Despite of more than 20 years of unremitting work, the objective and ideal of “rewriting literary history” are far from realization and the inquiry after “what sort of history is literary history” still remains unanswered. The current literary history is actually “an intellectual construct” overriding literary phenomena, which seriously neglects control and understanding of literary works, namely, original literature. The following questions ought to be seriously solved in composing a new history of literature: how can teaching and study of literary history return to literary works as an essential factor of literary history, how can the charm of literature present itself through instruction of literary history, and how can study of literary history be made an interesting process into the temple of modern spirit.

Modern Chinese literature; literary history; original literature; composition of literary history