Abstract: The modern consciousness of Hu Shi's literary criticism mainly came from western cultural thoughts.These thoughts contained ideological trend of scientism, philosophy of positivism and methods of western textual criticism, as well as criticism mode of positivism in literary criticism.His achievements on literary criticism were mainly in textural researches on classical novels, with the climax of establishing the neo-redology.His style of "understanding human beings and reflecting on society" in textural research on novels did not only improve the traditional methods, but also absorb the advantages of western criticism of positivism, which had some effect on the later literary criticism.