This article uses Brian McHale’s interpretative model of postmodern change as a dominant shift, i.e. as a transition from epistemological to ontological poetics, to explore trends and developments in the fiction by Su Weizhen, one of the most prominent Taiwanese women writers to appear on the Taiwanese literary scene at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, a period which witnessed the revival of women’s fiction in Taiwan. Firstly, I reexamine some of the basic characteristics of Su Weizhen’s earlier work and try to demonstrate what might possibly have directed it to the epistemological dominant of modernist literature. In the second part of the article, I trace the subsequent shift towards ontological poetics, described by Brian McHale as being a characteristic of postmodernist fiction in general, something which has been partly realized in Su Weizhen’s more recent works. This, however, is not to say that I wish to argue that Su Weizhen should be placed among the pantheon of modernist or postmodernist writers; rather, I would like to point out that by using McHale’s model to (re)interpret her works, we can arrive at some new elucidations and interesting insights into the development of Su Weizhen’s fiction (including both form and content), especially as regards her more recent works.
In the history of the European avant-garde, zone compositions have appeared along the seams between entities. Likewise Czech avant-gardists saw Apollinaire’s Zone as a poem of transition, and it is essential to identify whence and whither, and to subsequently correct the established explanation of the Czech historical avantgarde’s attitude towards memory and the past. The early Czech avant-garde saw itself as a movement without a history, emerging from point zero, but zone compositions are substantially oriented towards the past. Memory, past and myth form an integral part of zone compositions — the forms of the modern-age epic. Within the context of the long compositions of European modernism, this study analyses Czech zone compositions as a special form of the epic, as an alternative pole of the Czech historical avant-garde.
The present study deals with Růžena Svobodová’s prose work from the turn of the century. It views the novels Zamotaná vlákna (Tangled Threads, 1899), Milenky (Mistresses, 1902) and the collection of short stories Pěšinkami srdce (The Paths of the Heart, 1902) as aesthetic phenomena, through which it is to some extent possible to (re-)construct the literary debate going on at that time, its trends and its transformations. By interpreting these novels and short stories against the backdrop of our knowledge of the author’s early works, as well as by comparing their journal and book versions, we aim to identify new elements in their content and form, which are essentially a manifestation of movements in the literary field.
In Taiwanese literature, as in many other national literatures, realism is a term which has been used to serve many aims. Aesthetic and narrative aspects contribute to realism as much as poliical, ideological and/or social convictions. In Taiwam, it has been used as a label by almost all literary groups and schools since the first wave of native literature (xiangtu wenxue) in the 1920s in order to describe and ligitimize their respective literary and - frequently - political claims. Over time, the very meaning of the term "realism" had been subject to multiple changes, thus turning "realism" into an almost empty signifier that needed to be further framed. Realism increasingly tended to be accompanied by an explanatory adjunct, specifying what kind of realism was indicated. The article re-evaluates epistemological issues connected to the use of realism among Taiwan´s modernists and nativists in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that the struggle between both groups is primarily in relation to the appropriate adjunct to be attached to realism. Both movements illustrate how realism has grown into a meta-term of modernity, while its aesthetics, subject matter, and ethical impact have became increasingly vague.
The paper examines theoretical discourses of ethnicity and has three main objectives: (1) to categorize and compare three academic approaches to-wards ethnicity, nation and nationalism, (2) to identify the core distinction between ethnic and national identity, and (3) to analyze the differences between approaches through activity and objectivity of ethnicity. The traditional distinction between primordialist and modernist/situationist approaches is enhanced by adding the ethicist approach to the interjacent boundary. There are three core lines of distinctions between these approaches. Firstly, it is, more or less, the dis-tinction between primordiality of ethnicity and modernity of nation, not primordiality and modernity itself, which divides the discussed approaches. Secondly, most academic theories, regardless of their background, interpret the ethnicity (nation) as situational rather than objective or subjective phenomenon. Lastly, it is the scale of activity of ethnicity (activity of individuals - components - systems) which differs among the theories.
This study seeks an answer to the question when and how the Czech romantic K. H. Mácha (1810–1836) started to be seen as a “modern” poet who could inspire authors writing decades after his death. The study proves that the image of “modern” Mácha as the first Czech poet to achieve the autonomy of art already existed between 1860 and 1890, and that Mácha’s artistic reputation grew constantly throughout the second half of the 19th century. This argument is based on a vast amount of evidence, mostly taken from literary journalism and criticism between 1858 and 1910 (the latter year seeing the centenary of Mácha’s birth).
Ellen Key and Laura Marholm belonged to the mosts interesting female thinkers during fin de siècle period. Their concepts of female sexual and psychological nature were widely accepted by the German, Austrian and Czech male modernists in contrast to responses from the suffrage movement. The article analyses the cooperation of Marholm and Key with the Viennese weekly Die Zeit and its intellectual background. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou