The Interactions between Modernist Literature and Politics-Society in Taiwan (1949-1973)
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Chang, Hsiao-Hui
Abstract
Individualism is the common characteristic of liberalism and modernism, which these two ideologies both respect the diversity of human beings as well as their freedom. When people’s liberty was restricted and they lost the rights to propose their sociopolitical concerns in the 1950s and 1960s in Taiwan, a part of writers tried to create modernist literature in order to express the anxiety and disaffection of Taiwanese people. Some of Taiwanese readers, however, were not familiar with it in the beginning stage. Actually, modernism is one of the Western artistic trends which was spreaded to Taiwan extensively after 1949. Therefore, they satirized modernist literature as “not related to reality.” In fact, these modernists’ works, focusing on describing characters’ inner minds instead of external circumstances, disclose many Taiwaneses’ real feeling and thoughts which were not able to be spoken out in the era without freedom of speech. Moreover, the modernists’ foresights guided readers to find out that they were instilled gender and race prejudices by their family or national education. The content of modern Taiwan literature even facilitate the social movements for female, homosexual, and aborigine in the 1980s. This dissertation is arranged in three parts. The first part deals with the communication between liberalists and modernists in Taiwan and their common thoughts through five journals, Free China, Literary Review, Literary Star (Wenxing), Modern Literature, and The Intellectuals, where their works were published. Chapter 1 offers a survey of political, social, economic, and cultural state in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Chapter 2 discusses the two main causes of the bloom of modernist literature in Taiwan, which are United States’ Aid along with abundant American cultural resouses and Taiwanese intellectuals’ liberal-mind under the authoritative rule. The three chpaters of Part 2 focuses on Taiwanese’ inner world which was taken down in modernist literature. Chapter 3 begins with a review of the development and criticisms of modernism in Taiwan. Chapter 4 and 5 prove that modernist poems and fictions, seperattely, are the important medium which expressed Taiwanese mind when they had little freedom. Furthermore, these works encouraged Taiwanese to keep striving for liberty and democracy. Part 3 deals with the interactions between modernist literature and real society, as well as the discrepancy and complementarity among poetry, fiction, and reality.
Subjects
Liberalism
Modernism
Modernist Poetry
Modernist Fiction
SDGs
Type
thesis