Discovering the Gothic Body in Huang Li-Chyun’s The Room by the Sea

• Main Authors: Chia-Huan Wu, 吳佳桓
• Other Authors: Ronald Shane Judy
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/h63a69

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系所 === 103 === Abstract: Neo-Gothic in Taiwan: Huang Li-Chyun’s The Room by the Sea and the Gothic Body The Gothic is a genre of fiction that consistently reappears in each generation of Western fiction. It emphasizes ruins, the monstrous, and transmutation within culture, yet it also points to the elusive nature of desire in society. The diverse forms the Gothic takes on has allowed its creators to explore the dark side of human nature while, at the same time, offering Romanticism a space of existence in contemporary literature. In this thesis, I analyze the Gothic aspects of the Taiwanese writer, Huang Li-Chyun’s short stories in The Room by the Sea. The thesis is comprised of three main parts: the first part with an introduction to the Gothic in European and American contexts and then looks at the development of Taiwanese Gothic fiction. The second part focuses on the analysis of Huang’s works and mainly deals with the problem of the Gothic body and its relation to a “horror” derived from repression. Our bodies turn to sites of suffering when our consciousness is twisted, however, in order to escape from the wounded corporeality, our minds must first be the focus. Through portrait of conflicts in endured morality, novelists provide us the most comfort in our tolerable life. In sum, by reading Huang’s works in light of the Western theory of Gothic, it is hoped that basis for further research into the Taiwanese neo-Gothic can be established.