Study on "Wuxia" Novels in Taiwan during the Japanese Colonial Period
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Pahlberg, Patrick
Abstract
Wuxia novels (also known as "martial-arts novel"), a popular genre of Chinese trivial literature, was originally created by novelists in Shanghai in 1920s and its popularity soon spread to other areas with Chinese speaking population, including Taiwan which was under Japanese rule at that time. This study used the concept of "Zhaoshi" to analyze how this genre was introduced into the Taiwanese readers’ market, and how its social convention was establish under the double influence of popular culture and martial-arts ideology. Furthermore, I tried find out how the wuxia genre was receipted and recreated by local writers in Taiwan during 1940s. The results show that wuxia novels were introduced in the Taiwanese market right after wuxia movies and martial arts books, which both also belong to the wuxia popular culture. Under the influence of the ideology of modern Japanese budo, local authors tried to develop some kind of more realistic "wugong", which was in contradiction to the basic concept of wuxia novels, which is characterized by its fantastic approach.
Subjects
wuxia
zhaoshi
martial-arts novel
Japanese Colonial Period
kanbun
trivial literature
popular culture
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-97-R92121019-1.pdf
Size
23.53 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):332dd72b21b4ca019a9a6d641b22cb1d