本文考察五四以來現代文學系統中的抒情散文，探詢它的主體預設、作為「抒情傳統」的現代子裔本身蘊含的倫理預設等等。因現代抒情散文係現代抒情傳統之一環，故而必須先探討此一「傳統」在發明的過程中，做了怎樣的主體預設。從文類的體裁協約過渡到傳統文論對「文心」的倫理設定，再從這一傳統的建構，從陳世驤上溯至王國維，進一步延伸向文學寫作的「表演性」諸問題。再從抒情傳統論中的屈原問題延伸至作者、史傳問題。本文強烈主張，如果沒有作者論（史傳批評）的支撐，抒情傳統論將是缺乏根基的。由此而迴向抒情散文的作者問題，但願有助於弄清楚散文的本質。

As a subgenre of the modern Chinese “lyrical tradition” developed since the May Forth New Literary Movement, modern lyrical essays require us to explore the establishment of subjectivity and the ethics of its discourse. In this paper, I set out to analyze the construction of subjectivity in modern lyrical essays and proceed to examine the ethics of the genre according to “the literary mind.” Moreover, I will explore the issue from Chen Shixiang’s and Wang Guowei’s theoretical discourse to the performativity of lyrical essays. This paper also examines the problematics of author and other historico-biographical issues, with the question of Qu Yuan the author as a point of departure. On this premise, I argue that a lyrical tradition must be grounded on the author theory (as well as historico-biographical criticism); otherwise such a tradition would be a weak one.