Chapter 95 Section 2 Taiwanese literature on the stage of international conferences

In 1973, the "Comparative Literature Society of the Republic of China" proposed by Zhu Limin and Yan Yuanshu of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​and Ye Qingbing of the Chinese Department of National Taiwan University was approved to be established.The purpose of the initiative is to promote the rapid development of comparative literature research internally, communicate with relevant institutions in the world externally, and promote international mutual understanding and cultural exchanges.Since then, there have been many conferences at home and abroad, and Taiwanese literature has become the main topic of discussion.

In 1982, I was invited by Zeng Xianbin of California State University in San Francisco as a visiting professor to teach Taiwan's "Modern Chinese Literature" for a semester. At that time, they had already used my anthology as their textbook.There are about 20 students enrolled in the course, half of whom are Chinese youths. The cultural gap is very small. There is no need to analyze the situation and psychology of literary works too much. Teachers and students can get closer to the soul of Chinese literature.The half-year cultural exchange allowed me to truly understand the literature of Chinese-American writers in San Francisco, which they call "Oakland Literature", and the efforts made to understand the root culture.

Xia Zhiqing's "Taiwanese Literature" in the appendix of "History of Modern Chinese Fiction" praised Jiang Gui in detail, which can be said to be the beginning of Western research on Taiwanese literature.He cooperated with Liu Shaoming to translate "Taiwanese Short Stories 1960-1970" into English and provided many research materials at the same time.Liu Shaoming was an overseas Chinese student who went to Taiwan from Hong Kong to study in the early days. He was in the same class as Bai Xianyong and others in the Department of Foreign Languages ​​and Literature of National Taiwan University. He participated in the establishment of the magazine "Modern Literature". He has always affirmed and defended Taiwanese literature.Later, I translated some reviews and two Taiwan novels into English, one is Passing the Incense: Taiwan Novels after 1926, and the other is A Collection of Modern Chinese Novellas.Over the years, he has insisted that literature transcends politics overseas, and he is often invited to Taiwan to participate in various literary conferences.

In 1979, the University of Texas held the first symposium on Taiwanese literature in Austin: the following year, the collection of essays "Taiwanese Fiction" was published by Indiana University.The themes of the conference include "Modernism and Romanticism in Taiwanese Literature", "Two Directions of Realism in Taiwanese Novels", "Prospects for Taiwanese Local Literature" and "Images of Suffering in Taiwanese Literature". The discussed writers include Chen Yingzhen, Huang Chunming, Novels by Wang Zhenhe, Zhang Xiguo, Bai Xianyong, Wang Wenxing, Qi Dengsheng, Chen Ruoxi and others.Janet Frost, who presided over the conference and editor-in-chief of the Proceedings, said in the preface: "From the 1960s to the 1980s. Taiwan produced some first-class Chinese novels. Due to the prosperity of the economy and the popularization of education, it produced A fairly large middle-class (level) readership encourages literary creations of various ideologies. The content and style of the works are compatible and coexist. Homesickness and nostalgia, modernist techniques, and rural realistic realism present a vibrant of Taiwan."

For further affirmation and interpretation of Taiwanese literature, the most valuable is Professor Baizhi's "The Imagery of Suffering in Taiwanese Novels".Zhu Xining's "Iron Pulp" is full of intense pain when the old and the new blend; Wang Zhenhe's "Dowry-Ox Cart" shows the seemingly dull but deep poverty; The love between wife and children, on the surface, occasionally shows flashes of comedy, but in real life it is very painful.Bai Zhi is highly respected in the Anglo-American Sinology circles. He edited many anthologies of Chinese literature, from early to modern times, which are all textbooks in Anglo-American universities.Since the late 1950s.Some excellent students went to Berkeley from Taiwan to study at UC Berkeley. They studied under them. During the interaction between teachers and students and reading, he had a good understanding of and sympathized with the situation in Taiwan. Unforgettable, reflecting the situation in Taiwan.

When Mr. Xia Zhiqing delivered the closing speech, he gave a detailed introduction and affirmation of Taiwanese literature. This collection of conference proceedings is about the beginning of the naming of "Taiwanese Literature".When I compiled the English translation of the anthology, not only most writers in Taiwan believed that we were inheriting and carrying forward the "modern Chinese literature" that was interrupted by politics in the mainland, but also the world's Sinology circles for twenty years.Because we are the continuation of the mainstream, we can last forever.