The edifying function of literature determines that literature must be human-related and concern people’s material and spiritual life. It also determines that literary research, as an important part of literary activity, must contain elements related to natural and social sciences, which constructs the doctrinal basis for interdisciplinary dialogue with various disciplines. In the context of economic globalization and the rapid advancement of high technology, the interdisciplinary development of literary studies has become a major trend. Based on the needs and reality of literary development, Ethical Literary Criticism (ELC) widely borrows and absorbs research findings of Ethics, Psychology, Philosophy, Linguistics, Sociology, History, Anthropology and Natural Sciences. Through the innovation of discourse system leading by terminological innovation, ELC achieves innovation of viewpoint and theory. While continuously improving its own theoretical system and discourse system, ELC is also committed to using interdisciplinary perspectives and research methods. Through the exploration and innovation of the basic theory of literature, ELC provides new ideas to solve the crisis of literary concepts and theory at present, and contributes to the construction of a novel literary theory system.

Yale literature critic J. H. Miller’s rather prophetic claim that “the end of literature is at hand” draws attention to the impact of new creative writings, including algorithm texts. In 2021, the father of Ethical Literary Criticism, Chinese Prof. Nie Zhenzhao and his colleagues discussed extensively the ethical conflicts and repercussions of scientific advancements that affect humans, artificial intelligence (AI), and post-humans. Against the phasing out of literature, Nie Zhenzhao instead argues for the incorporation and development of new literary forms, functions and values which have invariably emerged with the ubiquitous use of technology in the twenty-first century. In Southeast Asia, Malaysian Chinese writers started dealing with sci-fi and robotic themes in the literary periodical Chao Foon in 1979, triggering thought-provoking discourses on potential dilemmas and ethical issues involving one’s identity, consciousness and choice. This article examines the preeminence of AIs in Woon Swee Tin’s Tianlangxing Shixuan, defamiliarization of languages in Looi Yook Tho’s futuristic poetry Moshiji Yuyan, man’s alienation in Lew Yok Long’s science fiction Beifen, omnipresence of an AI female in King Ban Hui’s Rengong Shaonu and the ethical appeals of “overmans” in Ho Sok Fong’s Lake Like a Mirror. It highlights the tension between science and ethics in Malaysian Chinese literature and celebrates man’s own inner conscious attempts to form a better world and humane society, in the face of the creation and empowerment of increasingly invincible and amoral AIs by their insatiable human programmers.

Somerset Maugham, a late Victorian British writer, examines in the early twentieth century how female identity is shaped by the daily routines of face painting. In his depiction of women’s makeup, Maugham surveys the relationship between identity construction in literary characters and their body representations. Taking makeup as an analytic subject, this paper studies the three changes in the heroine Sophie’s makeup styles and the three constructions of her ethical identity from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and the social constructionist views of the body. Through makeup narratives embodying body representations, Maugham probes deep into the tensions between the old and new moral codes, and explores the possible harmony between body and spirit, which provides inspiration for the construction of female identity in the twentieth century.

Employing the theory of Ethical Literary Criticism conceptualized by Nie Zhenzhao, this paper explores the ethical dilemma and selection process of three main characters, Nathan Zuckerman, Lonoff and Amy in Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer while wandering between rational will and free will, and the factors influencing their selection as well. Their transformation from free will to rational will implies the growth of the author. Through this autobiographical novel, Roth presents his views on ethics of literature: human ethical identity and responsibility are not restrictions on freedom, but mean mutual understanding, compassion, and tolerance. Therefore, the transformation and growth of the writer’s ethical consciousness help him make the right ethical choice. Nathan embodies the self-conflicting of Roth himself, acting as his agent.

This paper discusses the gendered science and technology embodied in Margaret Atwood’s science fiction Oryx and Crake. By analyzing the relationship between gender and science in the novel, it focuses on nature, women, and the people at the bottom. It further reveals that gendered science violates the ethics of technology and continuously marginalizes women and disadvantaged groups, nature, and the Other, making them victims in the development of science and technology and turning them into objectified symbols. Biotechnology and genetic technology, dressed in the cloak of science, have become patriarchal tools that violate technological ethics. Under the control of gendered science, nature has become a tool for mankind to grab benefits. Climate disasters and climate change have become the prelude to global ecological collapse. The disadvantaged groups under the new hierarchical system destroyed themselves along with the technomaniacs. In the story, the conflict between humans and technology is the game between technology and ethics. When science violates technology ethics and is gendered, we should find the “Zero hour” and start again.

The twenty-first century is a time of rapid development of artificial intelligence and the fruitfulness of cloning technology. Looking back from this point at the literary classics of the “pre-science and technology era,” we’ll have a new understanding of the scientific fantasies of our predecessors. A novel written during the Joseon dynasty in the eighteenth century, Onggojipjeon, expresses the early ideas of the ancients about “human cloning,” and although the story draws on a range of limited means, including religion and spells, the depiction of “human cloning” raises a number of ethical questions. Based on the methodology of Ethical Literary Criticism and from a new perspective of the era of artificial intelligence, this paper examines the ethical identities and ethical choices of the real and fake protagonists in Onggojipjeon, explores the ethical confusion caused by “cloning” and the tragic fate of the clones, conveys the ethical value of punishing evil and promoting good, and investigates the impact of such “Prototype of Science Fiction” on the development of Korean science fiction novels.

Nights at the Circus is Carter’s classic work on female monster writing and ethical construction of feminism. The female characters represented by the protagonist Fevvers have the morphological characteristics of Sphinx. Distant from the ethical environment based on blood relationship, they are both alienated objects and superhuman subjects, showing the contradiction and confusion of ethical identity. Combined with literary ethics criticism theory, Haraway’s cyborg thought strongly supports the study of ethical dilemma and ethical growth of female monsters in “heterotopia,” which refers to Brothel, Women Monster Museum, Imperial Circus and Countess’s Seminary in this novel. Gradually, these passive species grow into subversive cyborgs, transcending the binary boundaries of human society, such as species, gender and race, and completing ethical-identity evolution towards life unity. As powerful life forms in the sci-tech age, such female cyborgs symbolize Carter’s ethical identity imagination for the construction of contemporary human civilization.

Based on the prediction of human survival crisis, Kobo Abe’s science fiction Inter Ice Age 4 constructs a power composition of confrontation between “present” and “future,” revealing the violence of collusion between technology and power, trampling on personal interests and life. On the one hand, the depiction of the collusion between science and technology products and politics contains the allegory of the political dilemma of Japan under the pattern of American-Soviet hegemony in the 1950s; on the other hand, under the control of modern values, the “prediction machine” has become a “Fetish” over human value rationality, while the “aquatic human” transformation poses a serious challenge to the ethical scale. The hero is confronted with the conflict between the ethics of science and technology and the rights of survival and development, conservation and progress, scientific and technological rationality and value rationality, mapping out the author’s reflection on the paradox of modernity is mapped out.

Othello has an effect of education that differs from Shakespeare’s three other tragedies, revealing the deep culture of human life and demonstrating Shakespeare’s reflections on human ethics. It inherits the tragic tradition and innovates the theme of tragedy with vivid examples of that time, showing the deep relationship between tragedy and ethics. The reasons for the formation of the tragedy Othello are inextricably linked to the ethical environment of Venice in the 16th century. From the perspective of ethical literary criticism, in fact, Othello is an ethical tragedy arising from ethical confusion and ethical disorder. This paper explores the causes of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, taking the text as an example, and finds that racial ethics and gender ethics play a decisive role in the formation of the tragedy Othello.

Aristophanes discusses the severe challenges faced by Athens in the process of the gradual development of the Athenian Empire, reaching the peak and then going down sharply; these challenges are not only for the polis and other political communities, but also for the audience in the theater. Costume, as a means of power operation in Aristophanes’ comedies, has an impact on the audience’s ethical standpoint. Besides, as a performance of the chorus, the interlude usually plays a role as a kind of compulsory logic, which requires the audience to make ethical choices more directly. Finally, Aristophanes’ arrangement of the exit plays an important part in his comedies, as for the poet, the behavior of exit not only is the end of comedy performance, but more importantly, it also conveys the ethical value including warning value and negative moral value.

Twelfth Night focuses on rational cognition, rational choices and identity construction through Viola’s disguising as a man. Viola constructs a new gender and social ethical identity by disguising as a man, so as to integrate into the society of Illyria. However, the uncertainty of Viola’s disguised identity also leads to ethical confusions and conflicts, which makes Viola often fall into ethical predicaments. Viola’s disguise and choices in the face of ethical dilemmas affect the perspectives of people around her, and also promote Duke Orsino and Olivia to liberate themselves from the exclusive isolation. In the process of choosing, they continue to deepen their understanding of themselves and others, and gradually adjust the contradiction between the real world and the desire world. At the same time, the ethical identity of Viola and others was reconstructed. With the confirmation of identity and the change of status, the ethical order of Illyria was reestablished, and a benign development society has gradually taken shape.

Keats constructs the special narrative structure of “Ode to a Nightingale” with diverse auditory methods such as overhearing, auditory hallucination and weird hearing, indicating Keats’s ethical choice when faced with the specific ethical predicament. Keats uses a rhetorical question in the last two lines of the “Ode” to represent his ethical thought, which reflects the third realm of auditory response with sudden enlightenment, and displays his poetic idea of “negative capability.” “Re-listening” to the canonical “Ode” is of benefit for us to explore the ethical value of the “Ode”, to revise human beings’ habitual neglect of auditory sense, and to resume the intuition of hearing the natural voices.

This article studies how the ethical choice of the authors in The Displaced refines literature. Facing the post-2016 risk of being deidentified, these 18 immigrant writers then living in Euro-America address themselves as “refugees,” disidentifying themselves with western ideology, and thus communitying literature through communitying its writer, its writing, and its objective. In dispossessing western ideology, “refugee” authors transcend the Subject-Other division established by western ideology, communitying with the refugees under their pen. In this way, they speak as and for global refugees, visioning a harmonious human community in which people live together in friendship and love rather than separation and hatred.

Under Western Eyes shows the dilemma and paradox faced by individuals in Russia’s particular ethical environment. The overwhelming political order and political environment confuse the moral direction of the novel’s protagonist, Razumov. Occasionally, he was involved in a political case and faced the two extreme ethical choices of revolution and autocracy. Supporting the autocratic government but betraying the revolutionary Harding produced a contradictory dual ethical identity, and Razumov fell into an identity crisis and a moral crisis. In order to get out of the predicament, he made a tragic ethical choice—repentance and confession of his betrayal—and regained his moral direction. Razumov’s tragedy reveals that in the extreme political and ethical environment, individuals are always faced with paradoxes and dilemmas, and it is almost impossible to make ethical choices that meet the needs of multiple values once and for all.

Katai Tayma, a representative writer of the Japanese I-Novel, described the protagonist’s ethical anguish of love but not being able to get and the ethical predicament of trying to stop but cannot in Futon. Such ethical anguish in love affairs and ethical predicament were caused by the ethical environment in the late Meiji Period. With violent conflicts between individual desire and social ethics, the common Japanese were under the crisis of emotion and belief covered by the superficial social depression and felt confused on ethical issues during that period. Tokio was suffering, and his transgressive ethical selection had touched the moral bottom line of human beings. But finally, his ethical consciousness returned, his rational will triumphed over the irrational will, he was liberated from the ethical identity confusion, fulfilling the protection responsibility that an adult man, a married husband, an elder and a teacher should have for a 19-year-old young unmarried girl.

The non-typed spy drama Rebel takes Lin Nansheng’s growth as the main narrative line, closely follows the change of his ethical identity in the process of growth, and creates dramatic conflicts and arouses audience expectations based on Lin Nansheng’s ethical identity at different stages. In the growth narrative full of ethical choices and ethical identity changes, the whole play adopts a linear time flow narrative, and at the same time combines with the spatial art of film production, it successfully presents a growth narrative that juxtaposes time and space. In the process of Lin Nansheng’s search for belief, firm belief and practice of belief, spatial representation transcended its function as a story background, highlighted its significance as a space, carried the changes of individual emotions, showed the dilemma of ethical dilemma, and implied ethical identity changes, presenting Lin Nansheng’s gazing, farewell and inheritance.

American mainstream discourse constructs gender ethics, racial ethics and narrative ethics to serve its political and cultural hegemony. M. Butterfly observes the anxiety of Chinese American identity and defends Chinese American masculinity. Different from the stereotyped images of Chinese males created by mainstream American discourse, the protagonist Song Liling intended to perform her gender identity, breaking the binary opposition between good and evil, showing the multidimension and complexity of Chinese masculinity. Parodying gender and racial logocentrism, David Henry Hwang exposed the hegemony in the mainstream society, subverted the narrative ethics of Orientalism and presented Chinese American writers’ responsibility and value standpoints. However, in the context of ethnic ethics, the realization of narrative ethics is extremely complicated. Song’s cross-dressing behavior aroused ethical controversy, which shows that ethical context produces limitations in narrative and also affects the acceptance of the text.

In The Road, the contemporary American writer Cormac McCarthy has constructed an ethically chaotic apocalypse. The protagonists’ ethics are dislocated within the dark and cruel background, forming various dislocated ethical choices which are surrealistic beyond McCarthy’s realistic narrative. This article interprets these “dislocations” from perspectives of ethical literary criticism and myth-archetypal criticism, and further explores the apocalyptic ethics from the aspects of theme presentation, ethical reflection and ethical reshaping. The article suggests that McCarthy urges modern people to re-establish balance in chaos and find the road of redemption at an ethical level.

Children’s socialization requires a certain level of self-cognition, and can in turn help children to strengthen their self-cognition. In picture books, the large number of animal figures in the illustrations facilitates children’s formal distinction between humans and animals, and the anthropomorphic behavior in the text stories can inform children how to make the right ethical choices. The combination of illustrations and text produces a greater narrative effect, which is more inspiring. Daley B in You’re a Hero Daley B! proactively asks fundamental questions about the self, which seems to be simple and comical, but in fact is a metaphor for the ultimate thinking of human beings to explore the self, while calling them to reflect on themselves and return to their true nature. The ethical dilemma in I Will Love You Forever presents the contradiction and reconciliation of multiple identities, while The Cat That Lived a Million Times conveys the importance of confirming ethical identity and the contribution of self-cognition to socialization. Picture books present role models and warnings about self-cognition, which can expand child readers’ unfinished experience in reality, inspire them to confirm and choose identity, as well as effectively help children move from self-centeredness to socialization.

On April 30, 1975, Vietnam ended its long war and ushered in a new period of peace and national reunification, but it also left behind many post-war problems, such as a series of social crises and economic crises. Therefore, in order to solve these post-war problems, the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam was held in Hanoi from December 15 to 18, 1986, to officially implement the reform and opening-up policy (Đổi mới). The new historical background and ethical environment provided vital motivations for writers and novel writing activities. The new Vietnamese literature, including the novel, was born in such a historical context. Based on the democratisation and literary innovation movements called and supported by the CPV, the local writers have created a fruitful harvest of novels with their talents. Its achievements are primarily reflected in four aspects: the apparent renovation of novel thinking, the expansion of novel themes, the diversification of novel styles, and the specialisation of novel writing skills. However, a series of adverse factors such as the subsidy period (thời kì bao cấp), the market economy, international cultural exchange and globalisation have led to a crisis of moral values and the emergence of “không tải” novels that have no educational function. Thus, this paper adopts Ethical Literary Criticism to analyse the relationship between the ethical environment and the novel creation in the process of Renovation after the Vietnam War.