Abstract:As a Marxism revolutionist, Chen Duxiu, in his literary criticism, accepts the influence from Marxism, which means he requires that literature should be close to the reality as much as possible to exert its realistic and critical function. Meanwhile, he also adheres to his own idea that literature is for nothing but itself, trying to find an appropriate bounding point to balance literature and politics. Actually, his “literary revolution theory” and “literal meaning theory” are integrated as a whole. The former concept prefers to “reality” rather than “fantasy”, while the latter one refers to “the unification between words and expressions”, which means “to express meaning by describing the objects”. Only through this can the old view of literature—“writings are for conveying moralities”—be abandoned. Besides, Chen’s “literal meaning theory” equals not to “literary self-sufficiency”, but to “literary pragmatic theory”. The emphasis on “literal meaning” aims to liberate writing from imitating ancient works and plagiarizing cliche expressions, so that literary works can embrace the reality and move the readers. In general, Chen attaches great importance to writing realistically, focuses on the pragmatic function of literature to inspire people and change the world, taking the attribute of literature into consideration simultaneously. These literary views are in accordance with Marxism literature criticism theory.