英文摘要
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The changes on Taiwan's modern literature after the emergence of nativist literature have always been an issue worthy of discussion. On the one hand, Taiwan's modern literature is losing momentum to new trends of thought such as nativist literature, postmodernism and postcolonial studies. On the other hand, some researchers believe that modernism is not fully buried by the new trends but instead is still existing and exerting certain influence.
In this article, the author tries to highlight a third phenomenon that is less noticed by the academic world: modernism's mixture and integration with certain trends of thoughts that appeared after the 80's (such as postmodernism). This paper examines new generation novels that appeared in the 21st century, discussing the mixture and integration of modernism and postmodernism in terms of topics and techniques. The most common topics of new generation novels-self reflection on one's predicaments as well as alienation and the strategy to fight back-have a lot in common with the self awareness and resistance towards alienation and suppression shown in modernism. In terms of techniques, it is found that new generation novelists did not completely abandon techniques from modern literature but instead mix them into techniques of postmodernism.
The author believes that the mixture and integration observed shows the uniqueness and importance of new generation novels. The academic world had always believed that in general, new generation novels are mostly influenced by postmodernism which infuse them with the tendency of going astray, showing emptiness and playfulness. Nonetheless, if we analyze new generation novels from a modernist point of view, it is easy to observe that authors did not just blindly echoes the postmodernist deconstruction of self and subject. Instead, authors were going through a painstaking process to find a new exit for oneself without losing their deep believes in certain issues or subjects. At the same time, regarding the alienation problem that has bean tearing apart one’s own values and believes, new generation novelists adopted all kinds of strategies aiming to fight back even though these attempts showed little effectiveness. These characteristics appropriately reflected the spirits of modernism. The modernism adopted by new generation novels is actually a mixed-form which is blended with postmodernism. In comparison, its strength of subjectivity and resistance is relatively weaker. This can be seen as a result of the social background it evolved in. This article will compare new generation authors with those from the period of modernism and provide an objective evaluation to both.
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