The specialty of literary theory was set up in 1949, enjoying great prestige both at home and abroad as early as 1950s, and beginning to enroll and nurture graduate students. It was granted to be one unit of the earliest group to award the master degree in 1981, then was approved to award the doctorate degree in 1986, thus became one of the three doctorate awarding units throughout China at that time. This discipline had been included in the provincial key disciplines since 1994. In the year of 2000, the Research Center for Literary Theory and Aesthetics composed mainly of the personnel of this discipline applied for the key base for the humanities and social science studies under the Ministry of Education, and got passed. This discipline was examined and approved to be the national key discipline in 2001, therefore becoming one of the top-three state key disciplines on literary theory. This discipline owns 7 doctoral supervisors, offering doctoral programs on Literary Theory, Aesthetic Theory, Western Aesthetics, Literary Aesthetics and etc.; 11 graduate tutors, offering master programs on Literary Theory, Aesthetic Theory, History of Chinese Literary Criticism and etc.