Preface / David Der-wei Wang  vii

Introduction / Carlos Rojas  1

Part One: The Limits of Taiwan Literature  

1. Representing Taiwan: Shifting Geopolitical Frameworks / Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang  17

2. Postmodern or Postcolonial? An Inquiry into Postwar Taiwanese Literary History / Fangming Chen  26

3. On the Concept of Taiwan Literature / Xiaobing Tang  51

Part Two: Cultural Politics  

4. The Importance of Being Perverse: China and Taiwan, 19311937 / Joyce C. H. Liu   93

5. On Our Destitute Dinner Table: Modern Poetry Quarterly in the 1950s / Michelle Yeh  113

6. The Literary Development of Zhong Lihe and Postcolonial Discourse in Taiwan / Fenghuang Ying  140

7. Wang Wenxings Backed against the Sea, Parts I and II: The Meaning of Modernism in Taiwans Contemporary Literature / Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang   156

Part Three: History, Truth, and Textual Artifice  

8. The Monster That Is History: Jiang Guis A Tale of Modern Monsters / David Der-wei Wang  181

9. Taiwanese Identity and the Crisis of Memory: Post-Chiang Mystery / Yomi Braester  213

10. Doubled Configuration: Reading Su Weizhens Theatricality / Gang Gary Xu  233

11. Techniques behind Lies and the Artistry of Truth: Writing about the Writings of Zhang Dachun / Kim-chu Ng  253

Part Four: Spectral Topographies and Circuits of Desire  

12. Travel in Early-Twentieth-Century Asia: On Wu Zhuolius Nanking Journals and His Notion of Taiwans Alternative Modernity / Ping-hui Liao  285

13. Mapping Identity in a Postcolonial City: Intertextuality and Cultural Hybridity in Zhu Tianxins Ancient Capital / Lingchei Letty Chen  301

14. Li Yongping and Spectral Cartography / Carlos Rojas  324

15. History, Exchange, and the Object Voice: Reading Li Angs The Strange Garden and All Sticks Are Welcome in the Censer of Beigang / Chaoyang Liao   348

16. Reenchanting the Image in Global Culture: Reification and Nostalgia in Zhu Tianwens Fiction / Ban Wang   370

Appendix: Chinese Characters for Authors Names and Titles of Works  389

Contributors  395

Index  397

David Der-wei Wang

Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang

Chen Fangming

Xiaobing Tang

Joyce Chi-hui Liu

Michelle Yeh

Ying Fenghuang

David Der-wei Wang

Yomi Braester

Gary Xu

Kim-chu Ng

Ping-Hui Liao

Ling-chei Letty Chen

Carlos Rojas

Chao-yang Liao

Ban Wang

“Writing Taiwan speaks to the legacy of Taiwan literature, including its volatility, conflicting impulses and cornucopia of ideologies and literary innovations. The integrity of the volume and the individual essays reflects the achievement of ideals that are scholarly, technical, and intellectual, together with a welcome editorial decision not to sacrifice excellence for the sake of a speedy production. . . . I highly recommend this outstanding contribution to any reader who wishes to understand more about Taiwan, its cultural complexity, vibrant history and the intrinsic merit of its intellectual tradition.”—Rosemary Haddon, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

“This volume is, by design, a tribute to the richness and diversity of Taiwan’s literary achievement . . . . This volume broaches new ways of looking at Taiwan literature, transcending some concerns of its own time, but more generally reflecting them.”—Jeffrey C. Kinkley, The China Review

“These studies are about as objective as can be found in a field of study in which scholarly attitude and political motivation are often difficult to separate . . . Recommended.”—J. W. Walls, Choice

“Writing Taiwan . . . provides us one of the many creative ways of narrating Taiwan, reminding us that hybridity and difference are not a destination but a point of departure for our re-examination of the extremely rich heritage of Taiwan literature. In an era in which the borders of literature are being constantly redrawn and the legitimacy of literature renegotiated, this volume should be received more as a memento of a self-reflexive attitude toward literary history than an attempt to revise existing literary historiography.”—Pei-Yin Lin, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

“Writing Taiwan is the first study in English to examine the complex, multifaceted development of Taiwanese literature from the early 1930s to the late 1990s. This excellent book contains 16 essays written by scholars from Taiwan, North America and elsewhere.”—Josephine Chiu-Duke, Pacific Affairs

“[An] excellent book. . . . this is a conference volume, but either because conference planners were careful in extending invitations and assigning topics or because editors Wang and Rojas did masterful work in sorting and sifting submissions, Writing Taiwan succeeds in mustering disparate voices to address the central topic of the way in which Taiwan has been narrated into existence.”—Thomas Morgan, Chinese Literature

“The volume, in fact, works wonderfully as a useful guide for literary scholars, pointing to accessible pathways to a very rich field for research and provocatively reconfiguring the current shape of Chinese literary studies. Anyone who is interested in transnational literary studies, particularly in relation to Asian literature and literatures in Chinese, will find something in this volume to help construct new theoretical and referential frameworks for his or her research.”—Kuei-Fen Chiu, Journal of Asian Studies

“Writing Taiwan speaks to the legacy of Taiwan literature, including its volatility, conflicting impulses and cornucopia of ideologies and literary innovations. The integrity of the volume and the individual essays reflects the achievement of ideals that are scholarly, technical, and intellectual, together with a welcome editorial decision not to sacrifice excellence for the sake of a speedy production. . . . I highly recommend this outstanding contribution to any reader who wishes to understand more about Taiwan, its cultural complexity, vibrant history and the intrinsic merit of its intellectual tradition.”—Rosemary Haddon, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

“This volume is, by design, a tribute to the richness and diversity of Taiwan’s literary achievement . . . . This volume broaches new ways of looking at Taiwan literature, transcending some concerns of its own time, but more generally reflecting them.”—Jeffrey C. Kinkley, The China Review

“These studies are about as objective as can be found in a field of study in which scholarly attitude and political motivation are often difficult to separate . . . Recommended.”—J. W. Walls, Choice

“Writing Taiwan . . . provides us one of the many creative ways of narrating Taiwan, reminding us that hybridity and difference are not a destination but a point of departure for our re-examination of the extremely rich heritage of Taiwan literature. In an era in which the borders of literature are being constantly redrawn and the legitimacy of literature renegotiated, this volume should be received more as a memento of a self-reflexive attitude toward literary history than an attempt to revise existing literary historiography.”—Pei-Yin Lin, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

“Writing Taiwan is the first study in English to examine the complex, multifaceted development of Taiwanese literature from the early 1930s to the late 1990s. This excellent book contains 16 essays written by scholars from Taiwan, North America and elsewhere.”—Josephine Chiu-Duke, Pacific Affairs

“[An] excellent book. . . . this is a conference volume, but either because conference planners were careful in extending invitations and assigning topics or because editors Wang and Rojas did masterful work in sorting and sifting submissions, Writing Taiwan succeeds in mustering disparate voices to address the central topic of the way in which Taiwan has been narrated into existence.”—Thomas Morgan, Chinese Literature

“The volume, in fact, works wonderfully as a useful guide for literary scholars, pointing to accessible pathways to a very rich field for research and provocatively reconfiguring the current shape of Chinese literary studies. Anyone who is interested in transnational literary studies, particularly in relation to Asian literature and literatures in Chinese, will find something in this volume to help construct new theoretical and referential frameworks for his or her research.”—Kuei-Fen Chiu, Journal of Asian Studies

“This is an original project, difficult to achieve, that updates scholarship on the literature of Taiwan. Its originality is strong and welcome.”—Edward Gunn, author of Rewriting Chinese: Style and Innovation in Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose

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