Studied of fiction in "Taiwan Literature" during the 1960s: Narrative and Identity

[[abstract]]This research takes a literary magazine, Taiwan Literature, as the point of departure. Taiwan Literature was founded by Zhuo-liou Wu in 1964. I intend to explore the implied ideology and narrative intention of this magazine during the ‘60s by using the theoretical perspective of narrative and identity. In the aftermath of colonial rule, WWII, and the 228 Incident, Taiwanese people did not have the chance to reflect upon and pursue Taiwanese Identity. On the contrary, they were compelled to submerged in the grand narrative of China at the expense of their own historical collective memory. Therefore, the pursuit of the “colonial phantom”and the calling of the native land became issues that writers wish to deal with, and through writing they look for their identity. In addition, issues regarding gender and class are also important concerns of these writers. Through textual analyses, this research arrives at the following conclusions. First, the first and second generations of post WWII writers, having been through different political regimes, began to look at their motherland and expressed pro-Japan inclination in order to oppose Chinese nationalism. And this has resulted in the alienation of self-identity. Second, these writers began to make distinctions among phenomena such as city-as-modernity, rural-as-tradition, and Taiwan vs. West. In their efforts to discover and represent Taiwan, they also endeavored to deal with problems of class by portraying the marginalized people and lower-echelon intellectuals. Third, male writers regarded gender issues as carrier of class issues and social identity, while female writers wrote about gender in a distinctively feminine style, expressing female subjectivity and women’s history.