袁瓊瓊在八○年代初期以《自己的天空》獲得聯合報小說獎，成為備受矚目的臺灣女性書寫開創者，停筆多年後，於1998年推出《恐怖時代》。文本内容依舊聚焦於城市男女的情愛瑣事，卻與曩昔之作大異其趣，加入「怪誕」元素，藉由大量扭曲變形的身體空間與時空想像，呈現「日常」生活的「非日常化」。透過聖母，賢媛身分的崩解，城市男女情愛轇轕衍生的身體暴力，幻異時空的想像與生存焦慮的勾連，表述舊世紀結束之前，家庭與兩性關係在快速膨脹的城市吞噬下的變異。本文擬以「身體裂變」、「幻異時空」、「邊緣敘事」的切入視角，考掘《恐怖時代》如何以極短篇小說的敘事文體，彷彿玻璃碎片般地映射世紀末光怪陸離的城市變貌，割裂傳統父權文化的線性大敘述史觀，從而揭示個體處於困境的分裂與失序。

Chiung-Chiung Yuan was presented the Literature Award of United Daily News for A Sky of One's Own in the 1980s, becoming a pioneer among Taiwanese female writers. Yuan later published the Time of Terror in 1998 after retiring for several years. The content of the novel remained fixated on the romantic relationships and aspirations of urban dwellers. However, it provided an interesting twist with elements of grotesquery, whereby the author illustrated the ＂irregularities＂ in ＂routine＂ by extensively manipulating and distorting the human form and spatiotemporal imagery. The author completely dismantles the fair imagery of women, vividly illustrates the physical violence derived from the love and affection of urban dwellers, and associates illusionary space and time with the anxiety of survival to portray the transition of family and gender relations swallowed by a rapidly expanding city at the turn of the century. Based on ＂bodily changes, ＂ ＂illusionary space and time,＂ and ＂marginal narration,＂ this study aimed to explore how the author adopted a short-story narrative style to seemingly portray the bizarre changes of a city at the turn of the century through the reflection of shattered glass and tear apart the linear narration of the traditional patriarchal culture, thereby allowing a single human to plainly expose the split and disorder of the difficulties they face.