| Summary: | 博士 === 國立政治大學 === 中國文學研究所 === 100 === During the 1980s, women’s literature from both sides of the Taiwan Strait manifested certain number of similarities, that, apart from the subject matter, include also similarities in structure and form. In other words, in opposition to male writers’ enthusiasm for postmodern fiction and metafiction (Taiwan) or avantguarde and root-seeking literature (Mainland China), both Taiwanese and Chinese women writers favoured realist fiction throughout the whole decade. However, it is my belief, that it is precisely their preference for realist modes of writing (widely criticized since the heyday of poststructuralism) together with the allegedly rather limited scope as far as the subject matter of the 1980s women’s novels is concerned, that gradually caused its inevitable “downfall” – while previously hailed as the “Renaissance period of women’s fiction” in both Taiwan and Mainland China, the 1980s women’s literature from these two regions has in recent years become a topic shunned by both scholars and postgraduate students alike.
In order to challenge the existing studies and open up new vistas for future research, this thesis adopts realism as an important point of departure, combining subject matter analysis together with the formal and structural analysis of the texts while also paying close attention to the strong self-consciousness of most of the women authors that should, in view of this author, be reexamined as one of the previously overlooked aspects of the 1980s women’s fiction in both Taiwan and Mainland China. Moreover, following the renewed interest in realist literature within academia during the last ten to twenty years, this thesis adopts a rather “flexible” definition of realism as a continuous “process”, or, in other words, a literary form in a state of flux, that is in a constant need of polishing and amendment. This concept is then applied to a textual analysis of ten representative women authors from both sides of the Taiwan Strait (namely Li Ang, Xiao Sa, Liao Huiying, Su Weizhen, Yuan Qiongqiong; and Shen Rong, Zhang Jie, Wang Anyi, Chi Li, Fang Fang) in a further attempt to describe and evaluate the process from “reality/socialist realism” to “realism” that characterizes Taiwanese and Chinese women’s literature during this particular period.
|
|---|
