Abstract
Born in the 1970s, a new generation of novelists appears in the literary circle of Taiwan in the early 21st century. This group of novelists was originally known through winning literary awards with works imbued with a sense of place, and yet each of them developed one’s own aesthetics after they became well known. Precedent researchers mostly focused on the characteristics of neo-nativism in their novels, but rarely mentioned their literary aesthetics and the artistic influences they receive. This thesis thus attempts to analyze the artistic influences on Tsung-Wei Wang’s work and his writing style and to differentiate the major characteristics that the works of the new generation novels entail. First, Wang’s work encompasses both popular genres and serious literature, and maintains a distinctive writing style owing to his dual identity as editor and author. Secondly, because Tsung-Wei Wang has a penchant for reading foreign literatures in translation, not only are his novels influenced by French nouveau roman and Haruki Murakami, but they are also infused with cinematic elements. Thirdly, Wang has a persistent interest in adopting a female perspective with a focus on the theme of love in his work. Hence the representation of enclosed space has been the locus of Wang’s several novels, a locus that deserves further investigations. In addition, Wang’s turn to popular literature also exemplifies the choices that the new generation writers make when they face the difficulty in the field of literary production in Taiwan.