Ùi《出死線》論台語文學ê宗教向度

Abstract

The novel ”Chhut-si-soa(superscript n)” was published in the year 1926. According to current documentations, it is the first novel written in Peh-ōe-Jī (POJ, Romanized) Taiwanese. Consequently, it has special significance in the history of Taiwanese literature. Unfortunately, POJ writing has barely been recognized as part of Taiwan's mainstream culture. Moreover, POJ has been denied its literary value for having long been considered a tool for the preaching of Christianity only. Even up to now, most people in the field of Taiwanese literature still regard it as a textual source that provides images of Taiwanese people and Taiwan's culture from a certain era, not literature on its own merit. Actually, if we put aside our prejudices of certain religions, from another perspective, the POJ Taiwanese novel in its place as a tradition of religious writing is also an important feature of Taiwanese literature. In the Western world, has long been an important dimension of literature. Moreover, biblical literature is one of the important literary traditions. Maybe we can also follow their example and explore a new wellspring for Taiwanese literature from the POJ Taiwanese Bible, and thus highlight a more universal dimension of Taiwanese literature. For quite a long time, we have focused only on the dimensions of social realism, anti-colonialism and anti-feudalism in Taiwanese literature. The frontier of religious writing explored by the POJ novel might provide Taiwanese literature with something comparable to the Western literary tradition. ”Chhut-si-soa(superscript n)” is an autobiographical novel of TiN, Khe-phoaN. The main topic thereof is the core doctrine in Christianity of 'from death to life”. The author of this paper aims to analyze and comment on the religious dimension thereof to reposition it in Taiwanese literature.