Abstract: The literary ethical criticism in the humanist tradition nearly disappeared from the Anglo-American academia of literary study in the 1960s and 1970s， and until toward the end of 1980s did it reemerge to the scene and begin to show momentum of rapid development since then. The so-called “ethical turn” in the field of literary studies was brought about by the profound intellectual development in humanities and social sciences from which the recovered literary ethical criticism gained a series of new perspectives and methods. Tracing its line of development， we may detect two major schools—the Neo-Aristotelian and the Deconstructive. Each of the two camps has its own understanding of such crucial concepts as text， other and reader， and proposes unique approaches to literary works accordingly. The first camp inherits Aristotelian ethics and poetics， valuing moral and ethical education through reading literature， while the second camp does ethical criticism by drawing from poststructuralist theories， emphasizing readers’ reading experience as well as the ambiguity of textual meaning.

Key words: literary ethical criticism, Neo-Aristotelian, Deconstructive