Abstract:

Catherine Belsey is one of the most outstanding British poststructuralism literary and cultural critics since 1980s. Her works provide a new angle to the English literature and culture，and greatly influence British scholars and ordinary readers. Actively learning from the French theory of 1960s and 1970s ，she criticized in her early works the most popular theories of imitation and representation in traditional literary criticism in the western world. She refuted the classical realism，and favoured Renaissance literature，and put forward a new way of approaching literature which foregrounds the role of an active reader.