Founded In    1993
Published   semiannually
Language(s)   Chinese
     

Fields of Interest

 

Literatures in English

     
ISSN   1024-2856
     
Affiliated Organization   English and American Literature Association of TAIWAN
     
Publisher   Bookman Books, Ltd.
     
Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief:
Ping-chia Feng.
Professor of Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Chiao Tung University

Editorial board:
Eva Yin-i Chen Professor of Department of English, National Chengchi University
Wen-ching Ho Professor of Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Feng Chia University
I-ping Liang Professor of Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University
Yu-chen Lin Professor of Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University
Ching-hsi Perng Distinguished Professor of English and Drama of National Taiwan University
Tsu-chung Su Professor of Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University

     
Advisory board:
Ying-Hsiung Chou   Emeritus Professor of Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Chiao Tung University
Yu-cheng Lee   Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of Institute of American and European Studies, Academia Sinica
Te-Hsing Shan   Research Fellow and Deputy Director of Institute of American and European Studies, Academia Sinica
Rey Chow               Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Modern Culture & Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and English
William Tay   Chair Professor of Division of Humanities, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Sau-ling Cynthia Wong   Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

 

 

Submission Guidelines and Editorial Policies

A.The journal will not consider for publication manuscripts being simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Any content of thesis or dissertation will be considered as submitted manuscripts.

B.Two or three pundits of the concerned fields will participate in the anonymous refereeing process. Please take the advice of the comments of referees to revise the acknowledged manuscripts. We reserve the rights of revising the acknowledged manuscripts including any translation and the bibliography.

C.The author of the acknowledged manuscript will be presented with five latest issues.

D.It is the Journal’s policy to upload the content of the publication manuscripts to the associated websites of EALA for academic use.

E.Please send the manuscript, an abstract, and a list of keywords separately in Chinese and English as Word-attachments to: ealataiwan@gmail.com

F.Manuscripts should be prepared according to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, or please refer to the following concise principles:
a.The title of any book, journal, film, or painting in Chinese should be quoted with 《》. Titles in western languages should be italicized. For example: 《在理論的年代》by Lee Yu-cheng, 《歐洲雜誌》、the French children film 《大雨大雨一直下》, 《葛爾尼卡》by Picasso, Matrix, and Portnoy’s Complaint.
b.The Chinese title of a single thesis or brief work should be quoted with <> and with ” ” if it is in western languages. For example: 貢布里希的<魔法、神話與隱喻:論諷刺畫>, 以薩.辛格的<卡夫卡的朋友>, “Migrations of Chineseness: Ethnicity in the Postmodern World,” “Interview with Toni Morrison.”
c.Any names or titles of people, books, or translated works quoting in the manuscripts for the first time should be noted with the original language in parenthesis. For examples: 拉岡<Jacques Lacan>, 《人性污點》(Human Stain), <支持阿爾及利亞> (“Taking a Stand for Algeria”). However, commonly known foreign names (like “Shakespeare”) or nouns (like “postmodernism”) require no notes.
d.Numbers and year should be written in Chinese characters; page numbers and published year of the cited works should be written in Arabic numerals. For example: 「經濟學家在十八世紀末首次被視為自成一類。到了一七九○年,偉大的英國哲學家兼政治家勃爾克(Edmund Burke)就已預見了歐洲的未來,並為之哀嘆不已,他說道:『騎士時代一去不復回,如今詭辯家、經濟學家與謀略家當道;歐洲的榮光永滅了。』」(1985:3).
e.Information of the bibliography should be quoted with the parenthesis in the manuscripts. For example, “(Ondaatje 75)” or “(Dissemination 236).” If different books or essays of an author are quoted more than once, note their title or year of publication. For example, “(Said 1978:7).” If different works of an author in the same year are quoted, note “a,” “b,” and “c” after the year of publication. For example, “(Derrida 1996a:68).”
f.Footnotes are only for supplementary exposition. Please list the bibliography after the main text. For the form of bibliography, please refer to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

     
Mailing Address
     

Department of English, Tamkang University
151 Ying-chuan Road
Tamsui, Taipei County
Taiwan 25137, R.O.C.
Phone: 886-2-26215656 ext. 2006 Fax: 886-2-26209912
E-mail: ealataiwan@gmail.com

REAL: Review of English and American Literature [Yingmei wenxue pinglun]

Review of English and American Literature (REAL) is a journal of the English and American Literature Association of the Republic of China founded in 1993. REAL is published by Bookman Books Ltd. biannually (June and December) and is devoted to publishing innovative research results concerning English and American literature written in Mandarin Chinese. REAL was rated as the first-class journal by the National Science Council of Taiwan in 2003. Contributions from domestic and foreign researchers of English and American literatures are welcomed.

 

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December 2010, Issue 17

The Circulation and Transformation of Bodies


The Circulation and Transformation of Bodies


This essay explores how the trinity of being-knowledge-aesthetics founds the Western culture qua a structure of representation and how globalization bears on the vicissitudes of this trinity. The purpose is to clarify the limitation of this representational structure and to conceptualize the predicament in which globalization finds itself caught up when it desperately attempts to disavow this limitation. The Holocaust has been haunting Europe since the end of WWII and has been taken by critics as embodying the limit of representation. But this unrepresentable event does not seem to affect America, for its total spectacularizaton of life and history amounts to the cancelation of everything unrepresentable. By way of an analysis of this difference as it is revealed in several films on the Holocaust, this essay resorts to the ontological concepts of sin and innocence and looks into the unconscious structure, global knowledge, and related aesthetic issues. Freud and Lacan are brought into discussion in order to explain the homology between representation and the unconscious and to furthermore explicate the difference between classical neurosis and contemporary depression, the binding rupture between lack and excess, and the codependence between sin and transcendent Presence. With regard to globalization, this essay draws on the theories of Lacan, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Rancière to elucidate the characteristics of global knowledge, the planarity of global interface aesthetics, and the implications of global aesthetic innocence. The last part of this essay turns to Nancy's elaboration of "ex nihilo" and Giorgio Agamben's concepts of "a-knowledge" and double suspension in order to untangle the aporia of representation and globalization and to arrive at an aesthetics of true innocence which comes ex nihilo ontologically.

Sensuous Writing in Don DeLillo's Falling Man


The paper aims to explore how DeLillo pivots his writing of Falling Man on the body and presents a different writing strategy and his distinct observation of contemporary life. Based on the calamitous and astounding 911 event, he takes the body as the point of departure, exploring the domain of sensuous writing and an alternative angle to examine contemporary life marked by insecurity, uncertainty, and nullifying ambience. The paper, theoretically revolving around the axes of Merleau-Ponty's perception and Lyotard's idea of affectability, is divided into two parts. The first part is to apply the concept of perception to illustrate the intriguing connection and interaction between the self and the event. The idea is exemplified by how the characters reexamined the self, the other, and even the family relationship by means of their perception or corporeal responses in the wake of the 911. The second part is meant to probe into the affectability which gave rise to the rupture of language when the corporeal awareness had been overwhelmed by what was perceived. However, a significant difference exists between these two kinds of sensuous awareness. The former delineates the one, though going beyond the presupposed or hypothesized ideas, could still be incorporated into the pattern of cognition. The latter blocks the possibility of comprehension. It paradoxically emerges as a conspicuous inadequacy or breakdown of language but is marked by a sublimity of communication, self-renewal, and new writing territory. By focusing on the 911 event in Falling Man, DeLillo demonstrates different possibilities of writing and life recognition. He did not lapse into the postmodern writing centered on the endless deferral of signification or the perpetual void of language but took the sensuous impact caused by the event as the starting point. Significantly, the sensuous perception and affectability could not be set into any existent pattern of understanding but loomed either unexpectedly or incomprehensibly, challenging and even thwarting the attempt of regulation or understanding. Hence, what DeLillo means to present in Falling Man is not a historical retrieval or factual re-presentation but different writing possibilities and a distinct angle to examine contemporary life.

"Superinduced Superficies": Writing of the Sensual in Melville's Pierre


During the early nineteenth century, especially since 1830s, with the rise of free press and the improvement of printing technology and book sales, the era witnessed the proliferation of popular subversive literature, including sensational, criminal, Romance-adventure, pseudo-scientific literature. These "radical-democrat" works employ irrational plots and themes to expose how the republic deviates from the ideals of the founded nation. But major writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, problematize in various ways the ambiguity and paradox of reform spirit embedded in these popular literature. In Melville's Pierre: or its Ambiguity (1852), Pierre's experience can be regarded as the history of a young author who writes sensational literature during the nineteenth century. The novel consists of sentimental, sensational, romance-adventure elements filled with various deviated, ambiguous relationships, and exaggerated descriptions of sensual experiences. The writing of these sensual experiences not only constructs the fluid subjectivity, but also subverts the transcendentalist thought that privileges the power of sight. Despite this, the novel also points out the limitations of sensual writing because it can never penetrate the "inscrutableness" of represented objects. For Melville, the world consists of "superinduced superficies"; and behind them is just void. This pessimism is manifested when Pierre, in order to write a "great book," suffers from the derangement of senses that finally result in his tragic self-destruction. In other words, radical sensual experiences may cause the subject to fall into the abyss of the void.

Natural Supernaturalism: Matter and Science in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus


In the past, studies concerning Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus are concentrated on the issues of transcendentalism and romanticism. The subjects of science and matter, however, are overlooked or denied for they are "others" to contradict the subjects of spirit and transcendence. Via an intertextual reading of Sartor Resartus with its contemporary history and texts, this essay will examine the significance of "science" and "matter" as well as "natural supernaturalism" in Sartor Resartus. To juxtapose the natural theology in Carlyle's age, his personal experiences, as well as his Natural Supernaturalism intertextually, this study will expose new dimensions of Carlyle's binary structures that are different from the traditional science/religion and matter/spirit divides. The new binary structure exposed will be: the wise vs. the foolish, the inner eye vs. the bodily eye, the invisible vs. the visible, pure reason vs. vulgar logic, the objective world vs. the subjective world, the mechanic calculation vs. the dynamic fantasy, and nature vs. the supernatural. Under the new structure of the binaries, this study will show that Carlyle never emphasizes the interior but ignores the exterior, and respects the spiritual but criticizes the scientific. Instead, the wise is more than an absolute transcendentalist and spiritualist, but a philosopher who "stations himself in the middle" between matter (the exterior) and spirit (the interior) as well as nature and the supernatural.

The Marginalized Space of the Detroit Poor: An Example of Joyce Carol Oates's them


Detroit is an important geographical location in the early works of contemporary American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in this city, them (1969) established her repute and status as a serious writer, winning the National Book Award in 1970. Her subsequent novels, published in the '70s are also set in Detroit and its suburbs (Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe), explore the lives of American people of differing social class and status. The paper aims to probe the multiple implications of inscribing features of modern urban space in them, the side effects of modernity and its trajectories, including the slums, violence, crime, and so forth. Moreover, the urban space and text also serve as the loci proper giving shape to the novelist's representational style and her experience and perception of the outside world. On the one hand, the major concern of the discussion focuses on the lower-class Americans who, living at the sordid bottom of the slum, struggle for a modest survival such as Loretta, Maureen, and Jules and other ethnic minorities. On the other hand, the analysis also deals with the suburban culture of the middle class. By applying Balzatian realism in her depiction of the Detroit poor and her deployment of the urban text, Oates gazes at and contemplates on the panoramic pictures of the city image. In contrast, Expensive People (1968), Do with Me What You Will (1973) and Cybele (1979) emphasize the malaises of consumer culture, self-complacency of the bourgeoisie, and negative aspects of suburban life arisen therein. So far as spatial politics and maneuvering are concerned, American society, oriented towards modern capitalism, has embedded within a hidden agenda to exclude the participation of minority ethnic groups in urban spaces and planning. The discourse of class, race, and gender covered in them provides us with an embryonic structure to examine spatial representation in Oates's works. Although African Americans live in the city, they are regarded as the Other, who are marginalized without fail. Even though the ideological logic represented by the mainstream American society appears in the guise of multiculturalism, it is undeniable that there are conflicts and contradictions in American social, economic, and political spheres. The ideals of the American Dream attract many immigrants seeking to pursue their happiness and felicities in the Melting-Pot of the New World, but the voices of the poor white and the ethnic minority are indeed absent.

Lines of Flight: Sexual/Textual Politics in Timberlake Wertenbaker's New Anatomies


This paper aims to analyze Timberlake Wertenbaker's New Anatomies in terms of Gilles Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's theories, such as the concepts of writing machine, difference and repetition, nomadism, hybridity, transversality, exploring how Isabelle Eberhardt traverses the threshold of "becoming other" via sexual anarchy and textual anarchy to open up lines of flight, to generate the unceasing mapping of territorialization/deterritorialization/ reterritorialization. Arguably, New Anatomies attests once again a brave new anatomy of the contingencies of becoming in Wertenbaker's poetics of translation, adaptation, and transcreation, her metatheatrical politics in terms of a minor use of language, a way of deterritorializing language that leads to the indeterminate, unfinalizing agon between sexual/cultural hybridity and transversality, as well as subjective/textual diversity and dissemination.

Going Home: On Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Memoir


This paper intends to look into Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands (Southeast Asian edition subtitled: Memoirs of a Nyonya Feminist) in terms of the concept of diaspora. Lim's memoir can be divided into two distinctive parts: the first part is about her girlhood life which she experienced as an ethnic Chinese growing up in colonial Malaya and postcolonial Malaysia; and the second part tells the story of her migration to the United States after the racial riots of 13 May 1969 in Malaysia. The sense of dislocation and displacement pervades Lim's narra-tion. This is all the more overt in the second part of her memoir. At some point she even confesses that she "must continue in the United States to be a stranger in a strange land." This paper then examines how Lim regards herself as a third-world expatriate living a diasporic life and experiencing "an absence of place" in the United States and how her imagination is often webbed by interstices falling between citizen and alien, exile and immigrant, traveler and refugee, national and cosmopolitan.

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June 2016ALTTEXT, Volume 28
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Homing and Housing, Volume 23
Special Topic: The Fantastic, Volume 24
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Beyond the Canon, Volume 21
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Time Matters, Volume 19
Everydayness, Volume 18
Everydayness, Volume 18
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Innocence and manifest destiny, Volume 8
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