| Abstract |
The study explores Taiwanese novels “Healthy Apartment (1983)” and “Apartment Guide (1986)” and argues the significance of the “1980s’ urban literature”. The study also questions: being the symbol genre of the “revolt”, what is the “new” narrative perspective of urban literature, different from the former generation? First, rather than coming with the growing consumer society, the urban literature was accompanied with the rise of generation discourse, claiming itself as “the trend of deconstruction with the collapse of the old value system”. In terms of the “revolt” of urban literature, employing the interdiscourse of “city”, “post-modern” and “new generation” headed by Lin Yao-de, this paper shows that the “revolt” is expressed by its challenge to the narrative aesthetics of the earlier generation, “literature is realism”. Second, the works of the new generation underline the rupture, duplication, and jump-cut of the narrative, which strongly differentiate from the linear narrative, “literature is the truth”, emphasized by the generation of nativist literature. The homeland becomes the object which has to be criticized. Instead, the urban becomes the place to devote to. The difference between the two works discussed here is that “Health Apartment” maintains the trace of the combination of realism and post-modernism, while “Apartment Guide” completely changes to the post-modern writing style of banter, parody, and collage, abandoning the reality/truth thoroughly. |
