Abstract: Literary criticism in the 1980s, especially the Avant-garde literary criticism, is often generally characterized as having the power to open up the vision of traditional criticism but merely drawing on modern Western literary theory, and mostly applying theory but ignoring traditional criticism methods. As a symptomatic case in the field of criticism in the 1980s, the discourse logic presented by Ma Yuan's novel criticism brings together the pluralistic and rich features of the avant-garde literary criticism in the 1980s, showing its creativity and dialogue orientation in the selection of theoretical resources as well as the nationality-specific and time-specific characteristics in discourse construction. From reading of the novel text to writing of the criticism text, Ma Yuan's novel criticism in the 1980s presents three different theoretical resource transformation strategies and discourse construction： 1） modern transformation of resources of classical Chinese culture; 2） contemporary application of Marxist literary theory; and 3） Chinese interpretation of Western modern literary theory. This shows the multi-faceted ideological creation of critics in the 1980s.

Key words: Ma Yuan's novel criticism, avant-garde literary criticism, 1980s, localization, discourse construction