Abstract:

In a considerable degree the research quality of foreign literature is closely related to the researcher's visions and applied theories and methods.During our country's new period studies of foreign literature have achieved outstanding results in exploring external social historical-cultural conditions of literary works and writers' thoughts, feelings and experiences.However, there is almost a blank in expounding those works' internal forms and structures.According to Liu Xie, there is unchangeableness in changes of literary forms or there are changes in unchangeableness.Such a structural theory inspires us to combine structuralist explorations of universality with post-structuralist explorations of changeableness, which may be a scientific and effective approach.

Key words: foreign literature, Divine Comedy, structuralism, post-structuralism, Liu Xie