Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, NCCU

Title Healings through Reconstructions of Traumatic Experiences in Poetry: The Representation of Comfort Women in “Papaya,” a Poem of Chiang Wen-yu, Taiwanese Female Poet Author Lee, Kuei-Yun Professor, Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Tsing Hua University Abstract Chiang Wen-yu’s “Papaya” is a rare modern poem which expresses comfort women’s affections in Taiwan. This paper explicates that the representation of comfort women’s trauma through poetry is able to transform the significance of trauma into signifiers and then make these women’s stories be recognized by the society as well as decrease the harassment of horrific reality. Hence, the connection between the suffering subject and the world is reconstructed. In fact, literature is a public discourse of historic traumas. The diverse stories of comfort women can query that if the mainstream history deprives the historical position of these women because of nations, powers, or genders. Moreover, Chiang Wen-yu wrote their life history from the standpoint of colonized females. In other words, Chiang inspected the important historical event from the viewpoint of plebeians, females, as well as the colonized, and thus the effect of her work is “constructing the female historical viewpoint.”

Title Viewing Landscapes to Observe Change: Travel Narratives in Diaries during the Japanese Colonial Period in Taiwan Author Lin, Shu-Hui Professor, Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University Abstract Diaries written during the Japanese Colonial Period in Taiwan not only possess historical values of recording important historical events and keeping the memories of times, but also hold literary values with the illustration of Taiwan’s landscapes as well as the authors’ personal feelings about their traveling. So how did the writers illustrate their trips in such private works? How do these writings preserve the trace of the changes of times in Taiwan? In 1927, the Taiwan Nichinichi Shimpo reported the Eight Views of Taiwan as: Cape Eluanbi, Mountain Ali, Sun Moon Lake, Taroko, Tamsui, Ape Hill, Keelung Rising Sun Hill, and Eight Immortals Mountain. In addition, New High Hill and Taiwan Shrine were claimed to be the Two Special Views of Taiwan. This paper uses three diaries that are written in similar times and contain experiences of traveling around Taiwan as research materials. The three diaries are “The Diary of Chang Li-Jun,” “The Diary of Taiwan Governor-general Den Kenjiro,” and “The Diary of Mr. Guan Yuan(Lin Xian-tang).”This paper studies the images of the Eight Views and Two Special Views of Taiwan portrayed in the diaries, analyzes the narratives about traveling and the trace of changes implied in the illustrated landscapes; it aims to explore the connection between texts and culture, interpreting the academic meaning of the authors’ spatial mind or sense of place.

Title Reflections on national imagination in the novel Yuan (The Source) of Zhang Yi Author Chih-Ching Gesse Ph.D Candidate, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales of France Abstract The present study analyzes the national imagination in Yuan (The Source), a novel by Zhang Yi published in 1978. Yuan tells the story of three generations of a Chinese immigrant family in Taiwan by recounting how the main protagonist Wu Linfang follows his parents to Taiwan and begins his life as a settler. Yuan is also a historical novel inspired by the history of oil exploration in Taiwan. The storyline runs from the late 17th century to the eve of Japanese occupation in 1895. With its action weaved into the timeline of the most important events of Chinese modern history, Yuan describes the settlement of a Han Chinese family in Taiwan and links the personal story of Wu Lingfang’s adventures in the oil exploration to the difficult quest for modernization of Chinese people. The novel portrays Taiwan’s natural environment, its society, its residents’ everyday lives and interactions between different Taiwanese communities including the Hakkas, the Hoklo people and the aborigines. The national imagination of the novel is worth noting because of its multiple layers of historical and meta-historical significance. The story itself, i.e., that of the Han settler family, is embedded in the grand narratives of Chinese modern history, the history of Taiwan and the history of Taiwanese oil extraction. The novel was written in the late 1970s. This was a time when the idea that the Republic of China on Taiwan was the real and only China had ceased to be defensible. The novel was adapted in 1980 into an epic film, which appeared to conform with the Chinese ideology of the time. It was again adapted to a television series in 2010 after the society had undergone thirty years of nativation and Taiwanization. Each iteration of the narrative provides a separate snapshot of Taiwanese society and historiography. Studies on Taiwanese identity and national imagination have flourished since the abolition of the martial law in 1987. However, Taiwanese literature is often analyzed from the angles of sociology, of Taiwanese history, of interactions between cultures and politics, or of other contemporary cultural theories. Unfortunately, the focus has sometimes been shifted from the literary works themselves to their historical or social backgrounds or to cultural theories. The present article aims to analyze the national imagination of the novel itself and compare it to those of the 1980 film and 2010 series. Its reflections on the changes of the Taiwanese national imagination will hopefully enhance the understanding of such national imagination and lead to a new research direction.

Title Audiorealism: A Narrative Aesthetics of Taiwan Radio Novel Author Chang, Yu-Ju Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, National Chengchi University Abstract Until radio broadcasting was invented as a new type of modern communication, the contemporary world just began to consider how to form representations and narratives only by mediated sounds. There was no exception to Taiwan. During the golden age of radio, broadcasters and writers in Taiwan were also striving to explore the potential and the usages of sound in the making of a purely auditory world on the air. One of their successful productions, the radio novel, showed the ways in which literature and radio mutually shaped each other. Due to the invisibleness and abstractness of sound, this paper argues that an aesthetic logic of “audiorealism” widely pervades both the radio medium itself and radio novel’s production and distribution. On this base, this paper studies why literature, especially the novels, enter the realm of radio, how the novels transform from written words into radio sounds, and what the interrelationship is amongst print culture and auditory culture. Once the mid-20th-century Taiwanese novel is situated in the contexts of radio sound narratives and auditory culture, we will find the signature features of this literary genre not only reflect specific historical experience or ideology, but also echoes the currently developing medium and its methods of narration.