No Story In Taipei

Under the great influence of the globalization of capitalism, geo-consciousness and areal studies come into the spotlight of literary studies and cultural imagination. In the light of modernity, history and memory demonstrate the inherent logic of criticism and counter-criticism. The advancement of history devastates traditional culture memories, while the local spatial imagination and identity has provided the effective resistance to the grand narrative of historical discourse, to a large extent. In the field of modern Chinese urban research, no matter Beijing School or Urban Shanghai, make their efforts to recover the lost memories and unique geo-consciousness through the reveal of urban culture psychology and daily life. Taipei is facing the sharp conflict of tradition and modernity, colonial and semi-colonial, ethnic integration in the historical evolution; therefore, the studies on Taipei are both complicated and abundant.This thesis mainly selects Chu Tien-wen's texts as a target of case study. Based on the analysis of Taipei memory trilogy of Chu Tien-wen's works, it is easy to discover how her Taipei writing has completed the construction of novel modernity. In comparison with Eileen Chang, Pai Hsien-yung and other military dependent writer groups, Chu Tien-wen has opened her aesthetical way of Taipei narrative construction. Furthermore, the thesis has a deep investigation on the collective cultural psychology, which should be used to rebuild the urban literature in the history of traumatic memory and globalization. Chu Tien-wen's creative practice provides us a way of exploring the collective memory of Taipei or even the past century. Meanwhile, her identity and writing experiences have discussed how local culture should respond to globalization, as well as how to communicate individual experience with aesthetics in this materialized world.