Reassessing Taiwan's literary field of the 1950s

The central subject of this dissertation is the literary culture and history of the 1950s in Taiwan. This decade is the first ten years of Taiwan under the autocratic rule of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government, coming immediately after 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. Critical assessments of the literature of this period have so far failed to understand it as anything more than an artistically barren decade of pro-Nationalist and anti-Communist propaganda.; This dissertation applies Bourdieu's concept of 'field' to explore Taiwan's particular literary environment of the 1950s. The dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter one introduces the importance of studying the 1950s to the field of Taiwan literature, and a sketch of Bourdieu's theories of field and its "double hierarchization."; Chapter two presents the space of literary field contained within political power. This includes literary institutions such as writers' associations, literary awards, publication houses, and also details of some literary campaigns and cases of book banning.; Chapter three closely examines the text of two magazines: Free China Fortnightly and Literary Review. This chapter provides in-depth examples of writers and works to show the rich diversity of subject matter and viewpoints, such as their stance against Nationalist literary policy and political control.; Chapter four shifts to poetry circles viewing the 'field of poetry production' as a structured space which shows the characteristics and the transformations of the period. In the early period, the relationship between poets and the dominant culture reveals how political power penetrates the literary field. This is followed by a discussion of how in the late period, Modernist poetry debates and Modernist aesthetic principles make this circle artistically autonomous.; Through a discussion of a handwritten newsletter, chapter five explores a group of Taiwanese writers and their marginal cultural position. The outstanding writers of the Japanese colonial period were silenced in Taiwan's new society.