| This dissertation provides a new perspective for viewing Taiwanese literature under Japanese Colonization, since naturalism as a prominent literary mode has been neglected in most research in this field for many decades in Taiwan. Naturalism was certainly a global literary movement. Taiwanese naturalism was enormously influenced by French naturalism. But its specific cultural topography and particular colonial history make it unique from many naturalist versions.; The opening chapter is an introduction to my research. I examine how political power struggles had hampered the study of this field, how French naturalism affected Taiwanese via Japanese and Chinese translations and how diverse naturalisms are in different cultural contexts, especially, in French, Chinese and Japanese naturalisms.; The focus of the second chapter is the intersection of naturalism, Marxism and Postcolonial Theory in the context of Taiwanese literature during the colonial period. These three theories form a triangular theoretical structure, on which to base analysis of this unique literature. I examine various applications of Marxism, Postcolonial Theory and the "strategies of containment" of naturalism: i.e., social Darwinism and Schopenhauerism.; The following three chapters are separately devoted to three subgenera of Taiwanese naturalist fiction. The first category demonstrates the popular naturalist plot of man's endless failure in conflict with natural and social forces. It is tragedy of the unfit, formulating a new form of tragedy, which contains no traditional hero or heroine, only villains and victims. The second type of naturalist fiction, dealing with the specific kind of suffering that human beings, intellectual animals, must endure, manifests a naturalistic world as human "will" and "idea" in Schopenhauerian terms. And finally, the last subgenre of naturalist fiction will underline the fragility and impotence of humans in pursuit of love and intimacy---how the tragic plot and fatalist character of naturalism undermine human relations. |
