The National Museum of Taiwan Literature (Chinese: 國立臺灣文學館; pinyin: Guólì Táiwān Wénxuéguǎn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Kok-ka Tâi-oân Bûn-ha̍k-koán) is a museum located in Tainan City, Taiwan. It opened in 2003. The museum researches, catalogs, preserves, and exhibits literary artifacts. As part of its multilingual, multi-ethnic focus, it holds a large collection of local works in Taiwanese, Japanese, Mandarin, and Classical Chinese.
It was planned as a national-level organization to fill in a long-perceived gap in how the Republic of China's institutions had handled the island's literature as a field of academic inquiry and popular discourse. The Council for Cultural Affairs under the Executive Yuan set up the initial planning office.
Tainan was chosen for its historical significance as a cultural center. The museum is housed in the former Tainan City Hall, itself a national historical monument.
During Japanese rule the building was a government building of the former Tainan Prefecture.
Famous quotes containing the words national, museum and/or literature:
“All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“A rat eats, then leaves its droppings.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 85, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)