The new criticism, one of the representative figures, is challenging the traditional literary criticism. Most literary criticism before the beginning of the 20th century was based on positivism or romanticism. The former studies literature as a historical document, while the latter focuses on the author's life and psychology. The new criticism aims at the defect that traditional criticism ignores the unique aesthetic value of literary works. "In theory, taking works as the starting point and destination of criticism, the object of literary research should only be' the ontology of poetry is the reality of poetry'. This literary ontology that regards works as independent entities can be said to be the most fundamental feature of new criticism. " (See Zhang Longxi, pp. 39-40) As for the general principle of the new criticism, Terrence Hawkes has briefly summarized it as follows: it (the new criticism) puts forward that works of art, especially literary and artistic works, should be regarded as autonomous, so they should not be judged by referring to the external standards or considerations of the works. It can only guarantee a careful inspection of itself. Poetry is not so much composed of a series of references and verifiable statements about the external "real" world as a series of complex experiences expressed in language or carefully organized. The critic's goal is to pursue that complexity. It obeys closed analytical reading, does not refer to any recognized "method" or "system", and does not absorb any information outside the work, whether biographical, social, psychological or historical. (See Hawkes, 157) The pursuit of complexity will eventually be implemented in the scrutiny of words, and it is in this respect that Youngbson has opened up a new road with his fuzzy research. Let's make a trip along the ambiguous track based on the specific work of Young Busson. Ambiguous ambiguity, if many concepts in the world are ambiguous, then ambiguous concepts are even more ambiguous. Young Busson chose fuzziness as his research topic, which in itself showed great academic courage. When some Chinese and foreign scholars comment on the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, they often pick out a certain paragraph and say it is a strict definition of ambiguity. In fact, Yan Buxun did not give a clear definition to the concept of ambiguity as a whole, but used the word "definition" when classifying ambiguity. Indeed, from the very beginning, Youngbson proposed to expand the meaning of the word "ambiguity", and stressed that any slight difference in the literal sense is related to his theme, provided that this difference "provides flexible space for the meaning of the same speech". (See William Empson, p. 1) (Note: When the same book is quoted below, only the page number is indicated. However, such a statement as a vague definition seems to be insufficient. Another passage in the book is more like a definition: "ambiguity" itself can refer to the state of hesitation when we pursue meaning, to the intention of expressing multiple things at the same time, to the possibility that two meanings must be one or two, and to the fact that an expression has multiple meanings. (Page 5-6)
Yanbson lists many possibilities of ambiguity here, but he is far from exhaustive. Interestingly, the word "signifier" in this passage can be regarded as a wonderful portrayal of the author's "ambiguous mentality" The first comment in the reprint of Seven Kinds of Ambiguity 1947 is quite intriguing: "What is the best definition of' ambiguity' (the example at hand should be called ambiguity)? This problem will suddenly appear in all aspects of the book, which is unexpected. " (p. 1) In other words, Yanbson admits that he has never satisfactorily solved the problem of vague definition from beginning to end. What is even more memorable is that Yan Buxun admitted shortly after the opening that he "will often use ambiguity" to "avoid causing problems unrelated to communication". (p.6) Moral: If we blindly pursue vague and precise definitions, it will be counterproductive; It is best to be vague about the real state, but to follow the traces and understand the mystery one by one.
In fact, Youngbson pays more attention to case studies than theoretical generalizations. He believes that literary criticism should first bring people a sense of satisfaction, and the first element of this sense of satisfaction is not so much that the work confirms a certain theory as that it finds a feeling for the work. Of course, as far as fuzzy theory is concerned, Youngbson has made great contributions, but he is very afraid to ignore overactivity in the theoretical field. On the contrary, he has always been wary of abstract theory. On the one hand, he lost no time to sort out fuzzy phenomena in theory. On the other hand, he always reminded us that too broad a theory will inevitably be stretched, which is why he has always been cautious about the overall definition of fuzzy.
Although it is difficult to define, it does not mean that Youngbson lacks any basic principles in his overall thinking. All his explorations of fuzziness are based on two completely different viewpoints: first, whether fuzziness exists depends on whether readers are confused. Take puns as an example. If an author uses puns, but his actual intention is clear, then puns are unambiguous. Only when readers don't understand (at least for a while) what the author means in puns, puns enter the vague category. Second, the meaning of language is often much more complicated than at first glance; The extension of a word is at least as rich as its connotation, and there is often a logical conflict between connotation and extension. Knowing these two basic principles, even if you are ambiguous, you can feel its pulse.