Abstract
Unlike the leading critique of 1950s literature that often focuses on anti-communism and trauma, this journal papers concentrates on the lyrical-tradition writing phenomenon dominating the women’s literature during the decade, and proposes this “lyrical-tradition” as a theoretical framework essential to the reinterpretation of Taiwan literary history and female prose history in 1950s.By tracing how the lyrical-tradition of female prose was developed within the literary atmosphere in the fifties, I wish to sketch the contours of this aesthetic style through three aspects—the cultural system, production network and modernity—in order to clarify the uniqueness and significance of female lyrical prose writing at that time period. By examining the manipulation of the multiple structure of literary field, I wish to decipher the dialectical relations between female prose and the dominant culture, the policies on literature and art, the market mechanism and the literary trends (such as the elite and avant-garde modernism). Furthermore, by clarifying the dialogue between female prose and the development of literary history, and defining the significance and the value system of lyrical-tradition writing, I attempt to present the dynamics, multiplicity of the female prose in the fifties, emphasizing the literary significance of the female lyrical prose writing system and its aesthetic tradition.