Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber

Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber

by Anthony C. Yu
Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber

Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber

by Anthony C. Yu

Paperback(New Edition)

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Overview

The eighteenth-century Hongloumeng, known in English as Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone, is generally considered to be the greatest of Chinese novels—one that masterfully blends realism and romance, psychological motivation and fate, daily life and mythical occurrences, as it narrates the decline of a powerful Chinese family. In this path-breaking study, Anthony Yu goes beyond the customary view of Hongloumeng as a vivid reflection of late imperial Chinese culture by examining the novel as a story about fictive representation. Through a maze of literary devices, the novel challenges the authority of history as well as referential biases in reading. At the heart of Hongloumeng, Yu argues, 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. According to Yu, this focalizing treatment of desire may well be Hongloumeng's most distinctive accomplishment.


Through close readings of selected episodes, Yu analyzes principal motifs of the narrative, such as dream, mirror, literature, religious enlightenment, and rhetorical reflexivity in relation to fictive representation. He contextualizes his discussions with a comprehensive genealogy of qing—desire, disposition, sentiment, feeling—a concept of fundamental importance in historical Chinese culture, and shows how the text ingeniously exploits its multiple meanings. Spanning a wide range of comparative literary sources, Yu creates a new conceptual framework in which to reevaluate this masterpiece.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691090139
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 08/05/2001
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 344
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Anthony C. Yu is the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he teaches in the Divinity School, in the departments of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English, and Comparative Literature, and serves on the Committee on Social Thought. He is best known for his complete, annotated translation of The Journey to the West.

Table of Contents

Abbreviationsix
Prefacexi
Chapter I.Reading3
Reading the First Readings3
Reading as History20
Reading History, Reading Fiction26
Chapter II.Desire53
The Definition of "Qing"56
The Dialectics of Nature and Disposition66
Ritual and the Rule of Desire74
Pathocentrism and the Legitimation of Desire82
Chapter III.Stone110
The Stone of Fiction110
The Gate of Emptiness121
The Dream and the Mirror137
The Fiction of Stone151
Chapter IV.Literature172
Marriage, Learning, Examination172
Censorship and the Critics186
The Fiction of Desire194
The Fate of Reading210
Chapter V.Tragedy219
Choosing the Protagonist219
The Orphaned Contender226
The Thwarted Communion234
Between Delusion and Hope246
Conclusion256
Glossary269
Bibliography277
Index313

What People are Saying About This

Wai-Yee Li

Rereading the Stone is a wonderfully perceptive and capacious treatment of two important issues in Hongloumeng: desire and fictionality.... Anthony Yu's book is a tour de force.
Wai-Yee Li, Princeton University

From the Publisher

"A study of the very highest quality and value. Anthony Yu breaks new ground on a number of topics that are central to the interpretation of the novel and, in numerous instances, to Chinese literature as a whole. Rereading the Stone will establish itself as the single most important work on the novel's interpretation."—Patrick Hanan, Harvard University

"Rereading the Stone is a wonderfully perceptive and capacious treatment of two important issues in Hongloumeng: desire and fictionality.... Anthony Yu's book is a tour de force."—Wai-Yee Li, Princeton University

Patrick Hanan

A study of the very highest quality and value. Anthony Yu breaks new ground on a number of topics that are central to the interpretation of the novel and, in numerous instances, to Chinese literature as a whole. Rereading the Stone will establish itself as the single most important work on the novel's interpretation.
Patrick Hanan, Harvard University

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