National Allegory and the Tropology of Homosexuality
Date Issued
2001-07-31
Date
2001-07-31
Author(s)
DOI
892411H002094
Abstract
This project sets out to analyse the
intriguing phenomenon that critics and/or
authors tend to “allegorize” the textual
presence of (male) homosexuality out of
existence. What I mean by “allegorize” is
that they, instead of treating homosexual
presence literally as it is in the texts, choose
to disregard it altogether by interpreting it
either as a “symbol” or a “metaphor” that “in
fact” stands for something else. And this
interpretive tendency seems to become most
strong when the embedding text acts first and
foremost as a national allegory. What are
the unsaid premises and implicit
attitudes— towards the cultural status, or
even the political valency, of male
homosexuality— that facilitate such practices
of reading/writing? The project thus aims
to reveal some of these, first through a
critical reexamination of such a central
concept as “allegory,” both as a rhetorical
strategy deployed by authors and as a special
mode of interpretation adopted by critics; and
then through a detailed analysis of certain
relevant texts, including V. S. Naipaul’s In a
Free State, Timothy Mo’s The Redundancy of
Courage, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America ,
and, for some native Taiwanese examples,
Ying-chen Chen’s “Chao Nan-tung” and Li
Ang’s “The Blood Sacrific of Colorful
Make-up.”
Subjects
nation
allegory
homosexuality
tropology
V. S. Naipaul
Timothy Mo
Tony Kushner
Ying-chen Chen
Li Ang
Publisher
臺北市：國立臺灣大學外國語文學系暨研究所
Type
report
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