Rereading the stone : desire and the making of fiction in Dream of the red chamber
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Rereading the stone : desire and the making of fiction in Dream of the red chamber
Princeton University Press, c1997
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-311) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The 18th-century "Hongloumeng", known in English as "Dream of the Red Chamber" or "The Story of the Stone" is considered to be one of the greatest of Chinese novels, blending realism and romance, psychological motivation and fate, daily life and mythical occurences, as it narrates the decline of a powerful Chinese family. This study examines the novel as a story about fictive representation. Through literary devices, the novel challenges the authority of history as well as referential biases in reading. This text argues that at the heart of the novel is the narration of desire. Desire appears in this tale as the defining trait and problem of human beings and, at the same time, shapes the novel's literary invention and effect. Through close readings of selected episodes, the text analyzes principal motifs of the narrative, such as dream, mirror, literature, religious enlightenment, and rhetorical reflexivity in relation to fictive representation. It contextualizes its discussion with a comprehensive genealogy of "quing" - desire, disposition, sentiment, feeling - a concept of fundamental importance in historical Chinese culture, and shows how the text exploits its multiple meanings.
by "Nielsen BookData"