Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, NCCU

Title Yang Mu: A Game-Changer in Modern Poetry in Taiwan Author Michelle Yeh Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California at Davis, U.S.A. Abstract This paper proposes the concept of Game-Changer as a new way of analyzing literary history. As a case study, it examines the evolution of Yang Mu (a.k.a. Ye Shan, C. H. Wang, b. 1940), from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, as a poet and, eventually, a Game-Changer. The study pays special attention to the literary field from the postwar period through the 1970s, in which Yang developed his art and poetics; the various kinds of capital he had at his command; and the formative influence he exerted on the poetry scene.

Title Yeh Shih-Tao and Chen Ying-Chen: Two Aspects of Leftist Fiction in 1980s Taiwan Author Chen, Fang-Ming Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwan literature, National Chengchi University Abstract Yeh Shih-Tao (1925-2008) and Chen Ying-Chen (1937-) were the two representative writers in the spectrum of political ideology for “ pro-independence leftist” and “pro-unification leftist” respectively in 1980s Taiwan. Before and after the lifting of martial law during the 1980s when the development of capitalism continued to reach its apex whereas the waves of globalization began to sweep across this small island, the reshaping and reemergence of the leftist memory had attracted wide attention from the literary scene in Taiwan. Yeh’s memoir The 1950s of An Old Taiwanese Writer and Chen’s series fiction Bell Flowers had cast retrospective gaze upon the post-war leftist movement, both of which not only bore the unbearable and unspeakable marks of historical wounds done by the era of authoritarianism, but also witnessed the transformation of Taiwanese society done by the coming of capitalism. The inner pain as expressed in their literary writings was even heavier than their experience of prison in the past. In the face of the ever rising democratic movement, both of them embraced the high expectation of Taiwan’s future. Therefore, their works were devoted to competing for the rights for interpreting history and for the voice in the polemics over “homeland literature”. The trend of globalization enabled them to choose different sides of the democratic movement, but their critical attitudes toward capitalism remained the same. This article proposes to reexamine the red legacy of Taiwanese literature and to search for the tragic fate of the two intellectuals of pro-independence and pro-unification leftists.

Title Imagining Native Places in Taiwanese Women’s Literature :With a Focus on Chen Xue‘s The Child on the Bridg Author Shirouzu, Noriko Wang, Tzu-Wen (Translator) Professor, Faculty of Education and Human Sciences, Yokohama National University PhD student, Graduate school of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo Abstract In this article, I interpret The Child on the Bridge from the perspective of “women’s imaginings of native places,” and discuss how the experiences of her native place at a night fair resulted on the one hand in indelible confusion in the process of her self-understanding, but later had a great influence in her acquisition of a perspective that understands identity as a constantly changing process and attaches importance to its compositeness and plurality. Chen Xue’s novels have reflected the course of her psychotherapy over a long period of time, and it could be said that with The Child on the Bridge, when she became able to objectify her memories, rebuild her memories of her parents, and share memories with others, that is to say, when she became able to bring some sort of order to these confused memories and affirm her current self as a fluid and pluralistic entity, she finally gained the opportunity to repair relations with her native place and her parents. The Child on the Bridge highlights the heterogeneity of women’s experiences of native places through the depiction of the experiences of her mother and herself pertaining to sex and gender in their native place.

Title The Fake and the Truth on the Propaganda in the Period of the Imperial Subjective Movement in Colonial Taiwan: Along Masugi Shizue’s Adaptations of Sayon’s Bell Author Wu, Pei-Chen Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwan literature, National Chengchi University Abstract Sayon’s Bell is a true story which happened at the mountains of Suao in September 1938. A Taiyal tribe girl, Sayon Hayon, carried a local policeman Takita’s luggage who was drafted into army service and headed army, on the way to the foot of mountain but fell down to the village and died. Takita touaght in Sayon’ tribe since September 1937 and was Sayon’s teacher, too. Afterward, the governor-general of colonial Taiwan Hasegawa Kiyoshi granted Sayon’s tribe a bell to praise Sayon’s loyalty to her duty. Sayon’s Bell later became a well-known propaganda in the period of Imperial Subjective Movement of colonial Taiwan in the 1940s, Masugi Shizue also adapted this propaganda to write a serial adaptations of Sanyon’s Bell. However, Sayon’s Bell propaganda stressed on the mentor-pupil relationship between Sayon and her teacher, but Masugi’s rewritings deconstructed what the original propaganda intended to create because Masugi rewrote this propaganda from the perspective of gender. This paper will focus on the adaptations of Masugi’s Sayon’s Bell─The Village of Riyon Hayon and The Message and compare with the differences between the original propaganda and Masugi’s adaptations. Through this comparison, this paper will shed light on how Masugis’ works deconstruct Sayon’s Bell as propaganda internally and this male centric myth from the perspective of gender.

Title (To) The Eternal Reader and Writer: An intertextual analysis on Chun-Ming Huang’s three genres of “Fighters, Cheers!” Author Lin, Ke-Ming Huang, Hui-Chen Assistant Professor, Department of Taiwan Language and Communication, National United University Associate Professor, Department of Taiwan Language and Communication, National United University Abstract In 1973, Chun-Ming Huang went a Rukai young man’s home and there he was shocked by a set of pictures of the young man’s family members. These pictures showed a tragedy that four males in a Rukai family were compulsorily conscripted into different feuding camps and three of them even lost their lives in wars and conflicts. From 1988 to 2005, Huang wrote this tragedy with the title, “Fighters, Cheers!” in the three genres of essay, play script, and poem, respectively. This paper starts with the discussion of the three genres of “Fighters, Cheers!” especially of the process of transformation and comparison among genres, in order to understand the intertextual structure of Huang’s works. This understanding will offer an approach for considering the possibility of being an eternal reader. Furthermore, given that Huang’s intention to write “Fighters, Cheers!” was evoked by his reading of the pictures in the Rukai young man’s home, this paper will also discuss how the three genres of essay, play script, and poem interpret these pictures. Finally, with the comparison of the contents of the three genres, this paper shows not only how Huang deepened the theme of this tragedy each time a revision was made, but also how the movement launched by the indigenous Taiwanese in the 1980s influenced Huang’s revisions.

Title The Mediating Position of A Reporter: On the Speaking Strategies of Lin Hai-Yin’s Writings on Taiwan in the 1950s Author Wang, Yu-Ting Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Tsing Hua University Abstract As most critics recognize, Lin Hai-Yin often sets up her stories in Beijing before the Second World War and unfold the plots along the axes of women’s life, childhood and marriage. Against this backdrop, this paper instead focuses on Lin Hai-Yin’s writings in the 1950s and examines the ways by which Lin writes about her hometown Taiwan. Compared with other female writers from Mainland China, Lin has multiple identities that cut across different ethnic and geographic boundaries. Based on the new geographics of identity proposed by Susan Stanford Friedman, this paper attempts to examine Lin’s double crossings in hope of understanding her multiple subject positions that negotiate a variety of political /cultural forces. In analyzing Lin’s multiple subject positions, this paper wishes to investigate her speaking strategy and form of expression. That is to say, she represents herself as a reporter mediating different discourses by which to enter the field of cultural production in postwar Taiwan.

Title Naturalistic and Distorted Natures: The Conception of Landscape in Visual Art and Surrealist Poetry in Colonial Taiwanese Author Liao, Hsin-Tien Senior Lecture, School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University Abstract The transition from natural Taiwan to cultural Taiwan plays an important role in positioning Taiwan’s visual art during the colonial period. The reconstruction of the physical environment was a crucial step for the Japanese empire to implement in her colony of Taiwan. Physical nature therefore becomes a certain language containing psychological and emotional reactions towards such relationships. The paper intends to identify how some Taiwanese visual artists developed their landscape paintings, in comparison, how Yang Chih-Chang （楊熾昌，1908-1994）, a surrealist poet, conceived a different view of Taiwanese landscape poetry during roughly the same colonial period of the 1920s-1940s. Both sides paid attention to Taiwanese landscape and tropical scenery, but their terms of descriptive and reflective approaches differed. This interesting discrepancy shows that natural Taiwan has been endowed with cultural connotations and interpretations through the different media of visual and verbal representations and languages. Such perceptions also reflect certain value judgments and colonial relationships towards the Taiwan they inhabit. Between the objective and subjective, the literal and subverted, and the realistic and poetic, the Taiwanese landscape performed a different drama and meaning to their eyes. The way in which they conceived Taiwan therefore reveals how they discovered and represented colonial Taiwan.

Title Imaging the Common Language of East Asian Author Chiu, Ya-Fang Assistant Professor, Department of Taiwan Language and communication, National United University Abstract The Chinese translation of Faye Yuan Kleeman’s Under an Imperial Sun is truly a belated task for academic circle in Taiwan. Despite its English version published seven years ago, the research of the author has been still full of originality in investigation and interpretation for the students of East Asian studies. The author’s research process in Taiwan, Japan, and the US had enriched her literary reading and cultural thinking with multiple language experience. This book is a retrospective study of her homeland Taiwan in non-mother tongue and an inquiry into the literary texts related to the subject of South since the mid-Meiji era. It focuses on the colonial literature produced in Taiwan and Southeast Asia in the context of Japanese and analyzes the imagination of “Greater Japanese Empire” constructed by authors in different identities and positions. With rich source materials and literary works, the author successfully guides readers to go through the time and space of East Asia and to envisage the desire, memory, and trauma of writers during the colonial period.