Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219

Browse

Filters

Settings

Subject: search.filters.subject.space

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Spatial Representation in Three Detective Fiction Subgenres
    (英語學系, 2018-09-??) Zi-ling Yan
    In this study I examine a limited aspect of spatial representation in Golden Age, hard-boiled and postmodern detective fiction. I situate these representations within a theory of architectural enclosure, Tschumi's pyramid/ labyrinth distinction, then employ concepts derived from Gestalt theory as pointing up an ideological tendency in the Golden Age floor plans and diagrams by which crime is contained and spaces are normalized. John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939) serves as a test case. The subsequent sections offer spatial analyses of Dashiell Hammett's "The Whosis Kid" (1925) and "Dead Yellow Women" (1925) and Paul Auster's City of Glass (1987). Hammett's stories illustrate the breakdown of visual mastery in disorienting spaces whose textual representation parallels the Op's own limited knowledge. Auster's diagrams appear to offer a synthesis of prior positions: he incorporates plans which seem to promise meaning but which ultimately fail to establish certainty. I argue, however, that Auster's plans are most effectively read in their specific socio-historical and political context and that the performantive loss of referential certainty in his potagonist reflects a form of critique that differs from earlier gernres' use of these figures.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Heterotopic Agent in Chu T'ien-hsin's "The Old Capital"
    (英語學系, 2012-09-??) Chien-Hsin Tsai
    A number of heterotopias coexist in Taiwanese writer Chu T'ien-hsin's novella "The Old Capital": spaces of memory, reality, history; and here I analyze the female narrator in the story as a "heterotopic agent."Building on Michel Foucault's initial conceptualization of heterotopia as literature, I examine the agency of Chu's narrator in terms of the operation of walking, the act of seeing, and the art of remembering, which, I argue, make the construction of a heterotopic space possible. The purpose of my Foucauldian reading of "The Old Capital" is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to reconceptualize "heterotopias" in relation to the human subject. On the other hand, it intends to cast a new light on the creative agency of Chu, substantiated in her attempt to rewrite the past, live the present, and realize the future. From the perspective of "heterotopic agent," we may further entertain a creative hermeneutics of contemporary Taiwanese identity.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Spatial Representation in Three Detective Fiction Subgenres
    (英語學系, 2018-09-??) Zi-ling Yan
    In this study I examine a limited aspect of spatial representation in Golden Age, hard-boiled and postmodern detective fiction. I situate these representations within a theory of architectural enclosure, Tschumi's pyramid/ labyrinth distinction, then employ concepts derived from Gestalt theory as pointing up an ideological tendency in the Golden Age floor plans and diagrams by which crime is contained and spaces are normalized. John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939) serves as a test case. The subsequent sections offer spatial analyses of Dashiell Hammett's "The Whosis Kid" (1925) and "Dead Yellow Women" (1925) and Paul Auster's City of Glass (1987). Hammett's stories illustrate the breakdown of visual mastery in disorienting spaces whose textual representation parallels the Op's own limited knowledge. Auster's diagrams appear to offer a synthesis of prior positions: he incorporates plans which seem to promise meaning but which ultimately fail to establish certainty. I argue, however, that Auster's plans are most effectively read in their specific socio-historical and political context and that the performantive loss of referential certainty in his potagonist reflects a form of critique that differs from earlier gernres' use of these figures.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Heterotopic Agent in Chu T'ien-hsin's "The Old Capital"
    (英語學系, 2012-09-??) Chien-Hsin Tsai
    A number of heterotopias coexist in Taiwanese writer Chu T'ien-hsin's novella "The Old Capital": spaces of memory, reality, history; and here I analyze the female narrator in the story as a "heterotopic agent."Building on Michel Foucault's initial conceptualization of heterotopia as literature, I examine the agency of Chu's narrator in terms of the operation of walking, the act of seeing, and the art of remembering, which, I argue, make the construction of a heterotopic space possible. The purpose of my Foucauldian reading of "The Old Capital" is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to reconceptualize "heterotopias" in relation to the human subject. On the other hand, it intends to cast a new light on the creative agency of Chu, substantiated in her attempt to rewrite the past, live the present, and realize the future. From the perspective of "heterotopic agent," we may further entertain a creative hermeneutics of contemporary Taiwanese identity.