英文摘要 |
Disease Writing has attracted ample attention in recent Taiwan. Writers such as Huang Fan, Chen Ying-chen, Shih Shu-ching and Chang Qi-jiang are distinctive in that they all attempt to elaborate a unique outlook of Taipei city in terms of illness and body alienation. Because of their writing, disease has become one of the important elements of the Taipei narratives. Irony abounds in the writing because the representation of bodily diseases not only exposes the darkest and the most morbid underside of the bustling urban lives, but points to the mammon culture of capitalism as the source of disease. This paper deals with the characteristics of this kind of novel in three parts. Part One, titled “ The Image of Taipei: Landscape, Things and Images,” studies the image and memory of Taipei city. Part Two, “The Meaning of Disease and the Patient: Symptoms of Capitalism as Cultural Disease”, elaborates the relevance urban culture to disease. The last part concludes with an “aesthetics of irony,” in which the achievement this particular kind of urban literature is assesed in the context of narratology and theory of novel. It provides a symptomatic reading of Taipei discourse and an overall evaluation of its cultural meaning. |