Nostalgia, Stillness, and Sealing: the Resisting Dialectic of Modern Temporality in Yuan Zhe-Sheng’s novels

• Main Authors: Jen-YiChen, 陳溱儀
• Other Authors: Hsu-Ting Wan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/utj26n

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 中國文學系碩博士班 === 101 === This essay mainly focuses on the issue of “the dialectic of temporality” in Yuan Zhe-Sheng’s novels. In Yuan’s works, there are different types of “temporality”, or “concepts of time”, and he concerned about the conflicts, resistance, and dialectic among these concepts deeply. “Modern temporality” is the general “scene” or “background” in this essay, and the discussion will aim at the resisting dialectic against “modern temporality” presented in Yuan Zhe-Sheng’s novels. That is, the motion of “nostalgia” triggers a seeking of “stillness” in time, and refers to a “sealing” concept of temporality. In the essay, it is the theory of Kant interpreted by Deleuze gives a theoretical basis of “modern temporality”, which believes that “time” is a kind of “pure, empty form” and the “inner sense” or “the form of interiority” of the modern subject. On the other hand, the temporality of “sealing” and the temporality of “stillness” triggered by the motion of “nostalgia” presented in Yuan Zhe-Sheng’s novels, refer to the concepts of “virtual” and “coexistence” in Bergson’s theory of time and memory. In the final part of this essay, it concentrates on the time in the work of art and its dialectic with the “actual time”, and the discussion bases on the viewpoints of Deleuze, which focus on the systems of sign and time in the analysis toward Proust’s work. Through these profound, unique concepts of time, the discussion toward modern temporality in Yuan Zhe-Sheng’s novels could be more accurate, and the vision more expanded.