Writers of New Taiwanese literature used different literary devices to face the historical condition they were living in: willing to expose the injustice of Japanese occupation, the dark aspects of traditional society still conditioning people’s lives, and the economic inequality of a society struggling toward modernity under colonial rule, writers often adopted a realistic mode in their fiction. But even though realism was the dominant mode, depending on the authors stylistic character and on the different degree of censorship imposed by the colonial government in different times, irony and satire were also used in fiction, as can be seen in writings by Zhu Dianren, Cai Qiutong, and Wu Zhuoliu, among others. The paper is based on the analysis of three ironic or satiric pieces of fiction (“Ideal Village” by Cai Qiutong, “Autumn Letter” by Zhu Dianren, and “The Doctor’s Mother” by Wu Zhuoliu), and aims to interpret the use of irony and satire in these works. Stress will be put on the possibility to interpret these literary modes not only in terms of resistance to the colonizers, as it usually happens, but also as mature techniques revealing the aesthetic view of their authors, thus attempting a new evaluation of this fiction.

“Irony, Satire and the Spirit of Resistance: a New Reading of Three Taiwanese Short Stories from the Period of the Japanese Occupation”

PASSI, Federica
2010-01-01

Abstract

Writers of New Taiwanese literature used different literary devices to face the historical condition they were living in: willing to expose the injustice of Japanese occupation, the dark aspects of traditional society still conditioning people’s lives, and the economic inequality of a society struggling toward modernity under colonial rule, writers often adopted a realistic mode in their fiction. But even though realism was the dominant mode, depending on the authors stylistic character and on the different degree of censorship imposed by the colonial government in different times, irony and satire were also used in fiction, as can be seen in writings by Zhu Dianren, Cai Qiutong, and Wu Zhuoliu, among others. The paper is based on the analysis of three ironic or satiric pieces of fiction (“Ideal Village” by Cai Qiutong, “Autumn Letter” by Zhu Dianren, and “The Doctor’s Mother” by Wu Zhuoliu), and aims to interpret the use of irony and satire in these works. Stress will be put on the possibility to interpret these literary modes not only in terms of resistance to the colonizers, as it usually happens, but also as mature techniques revealing the aesthetic view of their authors, thus attempting a new evaluation of this fiction.
2010
78, n. 3
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/33866
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