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ISSN : 1229-9618(Print)
ISSN : 2671-7506(Online)
Chinese Studies Vol.81 pp.447-465
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14378/KACS.2022.80.80.20

Dialectic Approach to Reality and Fiction : The Historical Fantasy Novel 「Lady the Butterfly」 and Drama 「Seqalu: Formosa 1867」’s Historical Narratives of Taiwan

Lee Shu-Chuan
全北大學中語中文科 教授

Abstract

「Seqalu: Formosa 1867」, a movie based on Yaochang Chen (陳耀昌)’s historic novel 「Lady the Butterfly」, aired on Taiwan’s public broadcaster in August of 2021 and obtained the highest viewership. Furthermore, Yaochang Chen’s novel series 福爾摩沙三族記, 獅頭花, 苦楝花, and 島之曦 were reprinted, which all became best sellers, creating a big wave of of rediscovering Taiwanese history among Taiwanese. Although this series of events started from a fictional novel, it focused on exploring histry and reconfirmed the tension between literature and reality. The novel 「Lady the Butterfly」 is based on a real event, the Rover incident, where an American merchant ship wrecked off the coast of Formosa in 1867 and left 14 sailors attacked by Taiwanese Aborigiens. The novel won the gold medal at 2016 Taiwanese Literature Awards and has been an object of interpretation in the academia. The author, Chen, emphasized that he writes with an objective to recreate the true history of Taiwan and that his works are not ‘historic novels’, but rather ‘novelized history’. He presents a pluralistic view and emphasizes the convergence of Taiwanese people. Critics of his work also talk about the truthfulness of history, not aesthetics of his work. This paper illustrates what kinds of narrative strategy Yaochang Chen uses to confer his pluralistic view and what kinds of questions he throws at literary and historic narratives through his original way of novel creation.

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