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Taiwanese author Yao-Sheng Chang’s first collection of short stories Sew (Feng) is published in 2003 and, after eight years, his first novel Woman on the Other Shore (Bi’ande nuren, 2011). Different from either manifesting nativist writers or obscuring post-nativist novelists before, Chang is regarded by critics as a new-generation writer with his distinctive features in his fiction. These features such as distorted timelines, fixed spaces, intense struggle/resistance between characters, and dreams/consciousness/internal monologues from time to time in his fiction are the major focus of this study. This study uses textual analysis as well as psychoanalytic theory of dreams/consciousness and the Oedipus complex in particular to examine the chronotope narrative, struggle/resistance of characters, and their dreams in Chang’s fiction and conclude that the literary characteristics of Chang’s fiction lies in presenting “the struggle of characters under the chronotope narrative.” The close discussion of Chang’s fiction writings comprises the analysis of the chronotope narrative in Chapter Two, the psychology/image observation of characters in Chapter Three, and the reading of dreams/consciousness in his stories in Chapter Four. When comparing the reflection of modern or contemporary conditions in his works with the various flaws in people’s daily lives, it is possible to understand fiction’s role to play and voice to make in modern and contemporary society, culture, and literature. Accordingly, the characteristics of Chang’s fiction writings can be summed up as follows: 1. Sharp and vivid images, 2. Clear pictures, 3. Emphasis on “the cruelty of the stark reality and the helplessness in people’s business,” 4. Mostly the perspectives of grandmother/mother rather than the voice of patriarchy, and 5. The practice of concrete depiction of “human nature” allowing the exploration of the subtle and unfathomable primary desire and instinct in the human psyche and consciousness. Keywords: Yao-Sheng Chang, fiction, textual analysis, psychoanalysis, Oedipus complex, dream, consciousness |