On the Concept of Taiwan Literature

Abstract

Few debates about literary concepts, properties, and traditions in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world have generated as much passion and anxiety and given rise to as much intellectual provocation and reflection as the controversy over the notion of "Taiwan literature" that broke out in Taiwan in the early 1980s and kept its galvanizing force well into the 1990s. The number and variety of writings devoted to the debate are simply extraordinary, while the range as well as the depth of the topics examined goes well beyond academic literary studies or campaigns for stylistic innovations. At issue is apparently the definition and positioning of "Taiwan literature," but in this sprawling debate, literary discourse largely serves as a contentious field through which a symbolic reconfiguration is carried out. Incidentally, the conventional English rendition of "Taiwan wenxue" into "Taiwan literature" brings to the fore the crux of the contention: 1 should it be understood as "Taiwanese literature" instead? What, then, would "Taiwanese literature" connote? And what would be the relationship between this body of literature and Chinese literature? More specifically, what if any relationship is there between literatures from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China? In offering their different, often emotionally charged answers to these questions, participants in the debate cannot help but address, either directly or implicitly, questions of origins, political legitimacy, hegemonic practices and 379 AUTHOR'S NOTE: I thank Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Jason McGrath, Gan Yang, and Modern China's two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I also gratefully acknowledge a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities that facilitated research on the project. Unless a quoted writer has a different name for his or her English publications, pinyin is used to romanize all names and phrases in Chinese for the sake of convenience. It is difficult to ascertain how names are romanized on an individual basis when Wade-Giles is not the only approach used in Taiwan.

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“…5. My brief overview is per force somewhat simplified, for a full account of the various literary and critical positions in these highly complex debates see Tang (1999) and .…”

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