Writing Taiwan

A New Literary History

Autor: Wang, David Der-wei; Rojas, Carlos; Chow, Rey; Harootunian, Harry; Miyoshi, Masao
Editor: Duke University Press
Col·lecció: Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society
ISBN: 9780822338512
eISBN Pdf: 9780822388579
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2007
Mes: Gener
Pàgines: 424
DDC: 895.1/509951249
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

Writing Taiwan is the first volume in English to examine the entire span of modern Taiwan literature, from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present. In this collection, leading literary scholars based in Taiwan and the United States consider prominent Taiwanese authors and works in genres including poetry, travel writing, and realist, modernist, and postmodern fiction. The diversity of Taiwan literature is signaled by the range of authors treated, including Yang Chichang, who studied Japanese literature in Tokyo in the early 1930s and wrote all of his own poetry and fiction in Japanese; Li Yongping, an ethnic Chinese born in Malaysia and educated in Taiwan and the United States; and Liu Daren, who was born in mainland China and effectively exiled from Taiwan in the 1970s on account of his political activism.

Because the island of Taiwan spent the first half of the century as a colony of Japan and the second half in an umbilical relationship to China, its literature challenges basic assumptions about what constitutes a “national literature.” Several contributors directly address the methodological and epistemological issues involved in writing about “Taiwan literature.” Other contributors investigate the cultural and political grounds from which specific genres and literary movements emerged. Still others explore themes of history and memory in Taiwan literature and tropes of space and geography, looking at representations of boundaries as well as the boundary-crossing global flows of commodities and capital. Like Taiwan’s history, modern Taiwan literature is rife with conflicting legacies and impulses. Writing Taiwan reveals a sense of its richness and diversity to English-language readers.

Contributors. Yomi Braester, Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Fangming Chen, Lingchei Letty Chen, Chaoyang Liao, Ping-hui Liao, Joyce C. H. Liu, Kim-chu Ng, Carlos Rojas, Xiaobing Tang, Ban Wang, David Der-wei Wang, Gang Gary Xu, Michelle Yeh, Fenghuang Ying

Contents
Preface / David Der-wei Wang
Introduction / Carlos Rojas
Part One: The Limits of Taiwan Literature
- 1. Representing Taiwan: Shifting Geopolitical Frameworks Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang
- 2. Postmodern or Postcolonial? An Inquiry into Postwar Taiwanese Literary History Fangming Chen
- 3. On the Concept of Taiwan Literature Xiaobing Tang
Part Two: Cultural Politics
- 4. The Importance of Being Perverse: China and Taiwan, 1931–1937Joyce C. H. Liu
- 5. “On Our Destitute Dinner Table”: Modern Poetry Quarterly in the 1950s Michelle Yeh
- 6. The Literary Development of Zhong Lihe and Postcolonial Discourse in Taiwan Fenghuang Ying
- 7. Wang Wenxing’s Backed against the Sea, Parts I and II: The Meaning of Modernismin Taiwan’s Contemporary Literature Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang
Part Three: History, Truth, and Textual Artifice
- 8. The Monster That Is History: Jiang Gui’s A Tale of Modern Monsters David Der-wei Wang
- 9. Taiwanese Identity and the Crisis of Memory: Post-Chiang Mystery Yomi Braester
- 10. Doubled Configuration: Reading Su Weizhen’s Theatricality Gang Gary Xu
- 11. Techniques behind Lies and the Artistry of Truth: Writing about the Writings of Zhang Dachun Kim-chu Ng
Part Four: Spectral Topographies and Circuits of Desire
- 12. Travel in Early-Twentieth-Century Asia: On Wu Zhuoliu’s “Nanking Journals”and His Notion of Taiwan’s Alternative Modernity Ping-hui Liao
- 13. Mapping Identity in a Postcolonial City: Intertextuality and Cultural Hybridityin Zhu Tianxin’s Ancient Capital Lingchei Letty Chen
- 14. Li Yongping and Spectral Cartography Carlos Rojas
- 15. History, Exchange, and the Object Voice: Reading Li Ang’s The Strange Gardenand All Sticks Are Welcome in the Censer of Beigang Chaoyang Liao
- 16. Reenchanting the Image in Global Culture: Reification and Nostalgiain Zhu Tianwen’s FictionBan Wang
Appendix: Chinese Characters for Authors’ Names and Titles of Works
Contributors
Index