亞洲基金會와 냉전시기 대만문학의 경향

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between the Asia Foundation and Taiwanese literature from the perspective of the US cultural Cold War. The paper is divided into three parts. First, the Asia Foundation, a Taiwanese support enterprise, is explored through its depiction in the media. Although a private organization, the foundation operated under the goal of anticommunism in close collaboration with the US government, being actively involved in areas in which it was difficult for the US to directly intervene without drawing the criticisms of neocolonialism and imperialism in addition to inspiring antipathy among intellectuals of aid-recipient nations. According to twenty-years of reports from the United Daily News starting from 1950, the foundation focused on manpower resources and the development of education in order to lay down the basic structure of modern Taiwanese society. This initiative took the form of support for Taiwanese universities and academic institutions, the establishment and solidification of worldwide anticommunist organizations, backing for the overseas community in education and business, exchange programs for rural youth including 4-H clubs, aid for science education and industrial research, assistance for exchange in culture and academia, and a support enterprise, lead by the UN, for city and community development planning. These kinds of activities and aid measures had a broad influence in Taiwanese society including a trend in favor of the US in academia, the cultivation of pro-US public figures, the fostering of pro-US leaders in Southeast Asia through overseas education, education in science and technology, the translation and publication of anticommunist literature, and the exchange of individuals and culture between the US and China in the political and academic world. The second section examines the exchange that took place between Hong Kong and the Taiwanese literary establishment through the Asia Foundation by investigating the foundation’s aid in Hong Kong, the relationship between Taiwanese authors and the character of magazines published by the Asia Press, the Union Press, and the Everyone Press such as Asia Pictorial, College Life, Fatherland Weekly, and Literature for Everyone, and the representation of Taiwanese authors in literary contests held by the abovementioned magazines. This research has uncovered deep links between anticommunist, naturalist, and modernist writers. In the twenty years that followed 1950, the trends of Taiwanese literature and the literary establishment have typically been understood to be anticommunist literature, naturalist literature, and modernist literature. Under the absolute influence of the Asia Foundation, the rightest literary establishment of Hong Kong and the Taiwanese literary establishment both put forth writing premised upon anticommunism. From this basis and the fact that Taiwanese writers participated in the Hong Kong literary establishment, that both literary establishments valued China’s traditions and culture as a cultural tactic in relation to communist China, that the introduction of US-style education and knowledge comprised a large portion of magazines related to the Asia Foundation, and that Taiwanese writers were actively involved in the translation and introduction of American literature demonstrates that the main trend of Cold War era Taiwanese literature was deeply related to changes in Kuomintang literary policy in addition to the Asia Foundation and US cultural aid.