|
This dissertation discusses the resilience of folklore in a transitional society which encompasses a local community and broader social networks beyond the locality. It centers on the folklore of the Truku tribe in Dowmung as the thumbnail of the transition of Taiwanese aboriginal folklore in the past century.
Focusing on the revival of folklore, this dissertation explores several kinds of text, including myths, legends, stories and ballads, contemporary aboriginal literature creations in the Chinese and Truku language, as well as indigenous symbols of Dowmung imprinted in the material culture, such as traditional weaving and hunting knives. This study investigates the variables that contributed to intertextuality, including literature, economy, politics, and education, that underlines the Taiwanese indigenous folk literature renaissance.
The folk literature renaissance reflects the development of Taiwanese indigenous folk literature in the past century. During the Japanese occupation, oral transmissions of folklore were widely investigated, translated into texts, and assembled into important monographs to prevent the crisis of cultural loss. After the Second World War, cultural anthropologists in Taiwan actively investigated the relationship between the text of aboriginal myths and legends, and the ethnic history and social culture, in order to point out that folklore is an important context for the development of ethnic culture. Meanwhile, humanities scholars emphasized research methods of folklore motif classification, focusing on the discussion of the poetic metaphors. Since the 1980s, studies for asserting indigenous subjectivity strove to determine folklore as the root of ethnic groups. In addition to uniting ethnic consciousness, folklore also became the core material for creating contemporary aboriginal literature. Although the folklore of the Truku in the Yayung Mglu (Papaya River) basin has local characteristics, it also aligns with the diachronic and synchronic development of Taiwanese aboriginal folklore in the past century.
Aboriginal literature works written in the Chinese or Truku language extensively draw on oral myths and legends, which even became the central motif of these creations. Folklore is retold again and again, and widely reproduced in these works. Furthermore, contemporary aboriginal works which aim for indigenous subjectivity and autonomy often used folklore as resistance literature. This results in the intertextuality between folklore and aboriginal literature written in Chinese or Truku and provides an important perspective on the folklore renaissance. At the same time, the writers of Dowmung also ascended to the ranks of aboriginal literature creators.
Through the mythological symbols of the Dowmung tribe and the textbooks used in Truku language teaching, we not only see the trajectory of mythology evolution in the past century, but also experience the significance of the traditional cultural process of the ethnic group. The intertextual relationship between the traditional weaving and hunting knive material culture, and the myths, legends and ballads that record social collective memory, work together to materialize the Dowmung folklore renaissance.
Key words: Truku, Folklore, Intertextuality, Traditional weaving, Hunting knives
|