The first comprehensive English-language study of literary trends in the
fiction of Taiwan over the last forty years, this pioneering work
explores a rich tradition of literary Modernism in its shifting
relationship with Chinese politics and culture.
Situating her subject in its historical context, Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang
traces the connection between Taiwan's Modernists and the liberal
scholars of pre-Communist China. She discusses the Modernists'
ambivalent relationship with contemporary Taiwan's conservative culture,
and provides a detailed critical survey of the strife between the
Modernists and the socialistically inclined, anti-Western Nativists.
Chang's approach is comprehensive, combining Chinese and comparative
perspectives. Employing the critical insights of Raymond Williams, Peter
Burger, M. M. Bahktin, and Fredric Jameson, she investigates the complex
issues involved in Chinese writers' appropriation of avant-gardism,
aestheticism, and various other Western literary concepts and
techniques. Within this framework, Chang offers original, challenging
interpretations of major works by the best-known Chinese Modernists from
Taiwan.
As an intensive introduction to a literature of considerable quality and
impact, and as a case study of the global spread of Western literary
Modernism, this book will be of great interest to students of Chinese
and comparative literature, and to those who wish to understand the
broad patterns of twentieth-century literary history.
