What Is Eighteenth-Century Xiaoshuo?

Mr. Shu Huai pointed out that "A Dream of Red Mansions" implies the pursuit of a new ideal of life, is to seek the full play of human nature, beyond the real life, to lead life to an ideal world [Editor: Lv Qixiang, Lin Donghai] "A Compilation of Rare Materials in a Dream of Red Mansions", People's Literature Publishing House, December 2006, page 1267. See Wang Shuhuai's "Talk about the Ideal of Life in a Dream of Red Mansions", published in the fourth and fifth combined issues of Cultural Pioneer, Vol. 7 (September 30, 1947). Mr. Zhang Jun also said that a Dream of Red Mansions has found poetry in daily life and children's leisure. A Dream of Red Mansions is a poetic novel, a poetic life and a poetic character. It clearly puts forward the fresh and beautiful ideal of life and social model, which is the reason why a Dream of Red Mansions is higher than Jin Ping Mei and other novels about the world [Zhang Jun, Shen Zhijun, Comments on a Dream of Red Mansions, Commercial Press, The first edition, August 2013, preface]. Combined with the senior scholar's research thinking and I read the experience of a dream of red mansions, which can I think cao xueqin is through to the family chores, leisure poems of complete record to think and reflect on, for life, this points to the pursuit of new ideal life, "is, in fact, a kind of equality and fraternity of humanities spirit, a free life of individual character make public, An ideal of a society of peace, justice and abundance, a form of life with dignity, morality, passion and poetry." [up] readers, is now in a dream of red mansions cao xueqin writing after 200 years, today's social system, cultural environment and the people material life level has been changed a lot, at the individual freedom, equality between men and women, rich life has achieved many aspects, such as tso that hope, then, What else can we learn from a Dream of Red Mansions today? In 200 years of time and space, what else have we lost that can still nourish our lives? What can we learn from our daily life? What can we change with The Times to warm our life? For several years, often read "a Dream of Red Mansions", character events and plots of sadness and happiness, heart with the circumstances, different opinions. The unique grand View Garden features elegant living, elegant dining, camellia, poetry and wine, piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, all of which are lively and lingering in the heart, inspiring people with admiration and admiration. In this process, involuntarily, trying to start from the basic life and emotion of people, to experience the fate of the masters of the book, experience their daily life, but also experience their emotional sadness and happiness. At this, with fine and elegant life a dream of red mansions "is a word to outline impression, in the grand view garden, this article first capture life jia baoyu's way of life, life attitude and life interest, life thinking for expressing" a dream of red mansions of pure elegant life "to try, hope that through the jia baoyu Jin Pu embroidered account, flower LiuFanHua, gentle prosperous life outlook, Insight into the author Cao Xueqin's view of life.

《紅樓夢》的研究，為中國古典文學研究中最饒富趣味的課題，各個層面的探討，均為紅學探微抉奧。本文從佛教治療學的角度，探討《紅樓夢》作者透過病／罪的書寫，一方面警戒世人，一方面自我療癒。文中呈現幾項重點：一、心病佛藥的治本作用：如黛玉的痴病、寶釵的熱毒、賈瑞的邪思妄動等心病，均由一僧一道應病予藥，對世人的貪、瞋、痴三毒作根本性治療。二、冤孽因果的還報作用：前世的情感冤孽，此生以眼淚、死亡、中邪等方式加以償還；前世種惡因、造惡業，今生即必須承受果報。前者如馮淵／甄英蓮／薛蟠、寶玉／黛玉、寶玉及鳳姐／趙姨娘；後者如鳳姐及尤二姐。三、懺情悔罪的淨化作用：作者一則愧對天恩祖德，一則懺悔生命中歷歷有人之女子，對一己的深情摯愛，故以書寫《紅樓夢》來自悔罪愆，投射到小說主人翁賈寶玉的心理，則是對家族罪惡的咎責，以及大觀園中所有因他而死亡或遭受苦難的姐妹們，深懷愧疚與追悔。四、以情悟道的昇華作用：作者以「情」來書寫創傷記憶，以「悟」來昇華苦痛，以「道」作為療傷止痛之藥方。儒家經濟之道是作者及賈寶玉所深惡憎厭的；神仙莊子之道又無法安頓身心靈；作者遂逐漸走上佛教空性思考的道路。綜合上述四者，《紅樓夢》作者援用佛教經論中的夢、幻、水月、鏡花等意象，來展現明空不二的覺性能量，以對治世人的病苦罪業。唯有佛法的「空性」證悟，對《紅樓夢》作者而言，才是終極的療癒之道。

Reviewed by: Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors and Dream of the Red Chamber, and: Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature Louise Edwards Li Qiancheng . Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors and Dream of the Red Chamber. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. 250 pp. Hardcover $48.00, ISBN 0-8248-2597-7. Zhou Zuyan . Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature. University of Hawai'i Press, 2003. 324 pp. Hardcover $55.00, ISBN 0-8248-2571-3. These two volumes both present new perspectives on classical Chinese fiction. Fictions of Enlightenment addresses the impact of Buddhist thought on the creation of classical Chinese fiction. Li Qiancheng argues convincingly that previous scholarship on three key novels—the Xiyou ji, Xiyou bu, and Honglou meng—has drastically underestimated the influence of Buddhism on both the creative process that produced these novels and on the reception of them. Fictions of Enlightenment reminds us that while Buddhism's influence on China has in the past century been limited, this was far from the case in earlier times. In this regard, Li's volume is a welcome and long overdue study. Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature examines key texts from this highly productive period of China's history and seeks evidence for androgynous gender identity in the society of the time. The Honglou meng, Jin Ping Mei, and Mudan ting are among the significant texts that this volume examines. Li Qiancheng's contribution to our understanding of the classical novel in Fictions of Enlightenment emerges not only in his innovative analysis of the novels themselves but also in his discussion of the materiality of writing novels in China. Li reminds us that while Confucianism was central to literati life, the marginalization of fiction within the Confucian tradition opened this genre to the full embrace of Buddhism. Scholars writing novels were consciously deploying Buddhist imagery and Buddhist philosophy against an overarching Confucian view of their class. The Mahayana tradition that flourished in China presented, in Li's terms, a "paradox" wherein the mundane world is unreal and yet time spent within it is vitally necessary for an individual to achieve transcendence in nirvâa. It was this tension between reality and illusion, the red dust of the world and enlightenment, that is the very stuff of much of Chinese fiction. While most students of Chinese learn that the Tang huaben were the origins of the novel in China, few would have been presented with such a coherent discussion of the continued importance of Buddhism to the writing and reading of fiction through to the high Qing. Li's volume is invaluable in filling this gap. In his exploration of the immensely popular Xiyou ji, Li has contributed a long overdue analysis of the "journey" as a powerful trope illuminating the philosophical and literary context of the novel. This has been achieved with a clear [End Page 154] and coherent explication of underlying Buddhist principles that gives the novel its depth. Li's analysis reminds us of the novel's artistry: it can be at once a highly sophisticated philosophical treatise and a popular tale of adventure and magic. This polyvalent text is brought to full life in Li's volume as both philosophical and popular modes of appreciating the travails of Sun Wukong and his traveling companions intersect and inform each other. The journey to enlightenment continues with a chapter on the Xiyou bu. This sixteen-chapter supplement to the Xiyou ji was written in 1640 and provides, according to Li, a bridge linking the sixteenth-century Xiyou ji and the eighteenth-century Honglou meng. Li regards this brief "insert" into the Xiyou ji as establishing new directions in the "fictions of enlightenment" that enabled the Honglou meng to emerge as an enduring work of immense mastery. The link emerges from the Xiyou bu's exploration of desire and emotion in Sun Wukong. Where the Xiyou ji deals with the avoidance of the desires of the tangible world, the Xiyou bu moves toward an advocacy of experiencing them. The novel reveals that one must first dream before waking...

Studies on the poetry of ”The Dream of the Red Chamber” should carefully distinguish between ”poetics” and ”poetry”: while the novel claims high Tang poetry, which emphasizes gediao 格調 as ideal models, in practice it adopts themes of mid-late Tang poetry, which scarifies elegance for rich variations and emphasizes xingling 性靈. This paper focuses on the poetic practice in ”The Dream of the Red Chamber”, covering aesthetic paradigms through style trends and image formations, to adoption and transformation of previous poetic works. Through detailed analysis it is clear that ”The Dream of the Red Chamber” in practice uses mid-late Tang poetry as its aspiration and source. Lastly, I discuss the psychological similarity between the poets of mid-late Tang and the characters in the novel to further illuminate the narrative background and the deep motivation of ”The Dream of the Red Chamber”.

As one of the four great classics of China, "The Dream of the Red Chamber" is the pearl of the treasure of the world classical literature. With the development of film and television technology, the masterpiece has been repeatedly put on the screen, and has gained great national popularity. In particular, the writing of the fate of some women indicates the plot of the novel, shapes the characters, creates the tragic atmosphere and the helpless tone, which not only guides the overall direction of the novel, but also greatly enriches the ideological and cultural connotation of "The Dream of the Red Chamber". To some extent, it is under the guidance of the ancient philosophy of fatalism that "The Dream of the Red Chamber" has such great charm. Today, although the rise of national consciousness, the public has their own understanding of breaking through the shackles of destiny. So this paper will start with the fatalistic view and discuss the influence of focusing on the Dream of Red Mansions and its expression on gender.

Reviewed by: Snakes Legs: Sequels, Continuations, Rewritings and Chinese Fiction Victoria Cass (bio) Martin Huang , editor. Snakes Legs: Sequels, Continuations, Rewritings and Chinese Fiction. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. 306 pp. Hardcover $49.00, ISBN 0-8248-2812-7. Sequels to great novels have typically been considered the unwanted children of "great literature," labeled often as derivative and pandering, and evaluated, at best, as documents in the history of taste. In this intelligent conference volume, however, Martin Huang gathers ten reassessments of specific sequels to great works and reconsiders the nature of this difficult subgenre. Established scholars in the field of fiction take on the sequels to eight major novels: Journey to the West, Water Margin, Jin Ping Mei, Dream of the Red Chamber (with two essays), Sui Tang yanyi, Ruyijun zhuan, Jinghua yuan, and The Journey of Lao Can. To begin the volume, both in his introduction and in his lead essay, "Boundaries and Interpretations: Some Preliminary Thoughts," Martin Huang takes on some of the difficult issues in the consideration of the genre. In the lead essay, in particular, he grapples expertly with the issue of definition: what is a "sequel." Where, in effect, does the masterwork begin and where does it end, since "almost all the long works of vernacular xiaoshuo . . . have undergone in one way or another, some complicated process of textual evolution and repeated rewritings" (p. 19). Many of the novels are themselves xu shu (sequels) of other novels. The Sui Tang yanyi is based on three earlier versions; the last forty chapters of the Honglou meng can be seen as a sequel to the first eighty chapters; the Jin Ping Mei is itself a sequel—greatly expanded—derived from the Shuihu zhuan; and then there is Liu E's own sequel to his novel Lao Can youji. Huang also considers the issue of novels that are "sequels" derived from other types of sources—classical poetry and history, for example. Huang examines the boundaries of this very slippery genre, developing a useful framework for his analysis by relying on both Western and Chinese terminologies. Following Huang's essay, each of the subsequent contributions provides detailed comparisons of the original novels with their subsequent sequels, revealing the ways authors take possession of the parent novel, then reinterpret, shift, interpolate, and reshape it to create a new offspring. In addition to specific comparisons, however, the ten studies in this volume offer insights into larger issues, giving both specialists and nonspecialists of vernacular fiction an assessment of what constitutes reading and writing in the vernacular subculture of Late Imperial China. First, we see in these studies the role of the vernacular novel itself, for if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the hundreds of sequels and continuations pay obsequious homage to the novel form; this collection of studies is clear testimony to the status of fiction in Late Imperial China. Above all, sequels [End Page 451] demonstrate a passion for reading and for the novel. Keith Mcmahon, in his "Eliminating Traumatic Antimonies: Sequels to Honglou meng" proves "the irresistible urge the authors felt to resurrect the mesmerizing world of Cao Xueqin's original novel" (p. 98). Here we see that in the later recastings authors hope to change the unchangeable—to alter the past, to resolve the love affair of the central characters and improve on Baoyu and vindicate Daiyu, to make right a world that is in some sense as real as the actual worlds of the readers. But sequels did not simply show that fiction seized the imagination of the individual; sequels demonstrated that fiction resonated forcefully in the public realm. Although many contemporaries avowed that fiction was "mere entertainment," novels clearly were an influence in the larger world, seen to shape opinions, morals, politics, and events. Indeed, the novel clearly functioned both as a barometer of social change and as a vehicle for social debate. Novels were a battleground, as we see in the processes of making sequels, a culture in the process of defining itself; we see the conflict of narrative identities, the battle for the one true version, a battle never possible to win, and therefore subject to constant reinterpretation...

The paragraph of ”Miao-Yu's Meditation” is crucial in The Dream of the Red Chamber. Miao-Yu, who fails to be purified, has struggled from the conflict of the reality and transcendence; that is, tge decline of the flesh and the destruction of the infinite prayer. When the path to transcendence is blocked, the trial based on ”Meditation” becomes bigger frustration. In The Dream of the Red Chamber, Miao-Yu practices practises Buddism with her hair. She is so isolated, eccentric that she cannot escape from conflict between the body and the soul. The Long Tsuei Nunnery is not only her shelter but prison, which symbolizes the secular manners. Her ultimate calamity implies the separation of reality and wish as well as an eternal prediction about the co-existence of good and devil and of transcendence and decline. Does the impasse represent a journey of no return or the path to relief? The distancing effect (time and space) in Miao-Yu's event filters the terrifying element and extract the metaphor of beauty. In terms of the familiarity of plots of Miao-Yu, reader's rational contemplation goes beyond emotional movement; yet, it does not mean that the former replaces or represses the latter. Yang-Mu's adaptation of ”Meditation of Miao-Yu” sinks the content and reveals the form. The attention paid to Miao-Yu has always been less than that t Bao-Chai and Dai-Yu; however, the separation of body and soul after ”Meditation” offers, in fact, much room for discussion. In addition to the historical relationship of the context, the eighteenth-century masterpiece The Dream of the Red Chamber and Meditation of Miao-Yu, published in 1985, also interpret each other. Based on poetics, this article aims, in the first place, to explore the track linking two pieces and, referring to ”Nomadism” of Deleuze (Gilles Deleuze, 1925~1995), to open a new way of reading relating to the deep concern for the connection of the subject and the object.

Feelings in interpersonal relations, particularly those concerning the constitution of self and the subjective emotion, of the Chinese people have received much critical attention from modern psychologists. Taoism and Buddhism offer religious doctrines and practices to transcend the sense of angst brought on by affection. In religious Taoism, the human world is viewed from the perspective of that of the immortals--through the device of people becoming devotees and fables about immortals being cast down to the mortal world--in an attempt to bring attention to the enormous weight of affection, especially those felt between men and women, in the worldly folks. This feature, while having both similarities to and differences from the Buddhist approach, is a clear manifestation of the alternative life view of the Chinese: relations between people and between the sexes are portrayed against the backdrop of a deterministic fatalism to explain the role of destiny and fate therein. Even though the arena in which the contrast between affection and its transcendence is played out is that of the mortal world, such fables as used in fiction and drama are able to give a profound insight into the religious essence of affection insofar as they portray affection in the form of debt that the immortals have to pay off before they could return to the realm of immortals. Examples of this sort of karmic understanding can be found in fictional works from the T'ang dynasty right down to the ”Dream of the Red Chamber” in Ch'ing times. Where the Buddhist perspective focuses on the doctrinal aspects of emptiness and illusion, the Taoist use of these fables inculcates an understanding both that emotional hardships in this life are a type of penance and that going from being ensnared by affection to understanding it is a type of initiation and redemption. From this we can see that these fables have a religious aspect to them, and the writing and popularity of a work like ”Dream of the Red Chamber” proves that classical Chinese fiction was certainly not lacking in the area of religious overtones.

Within the theories of Deconstructive reading, this essay is to focus on the writing intention of Dream of the Red Chamber. To introduce the deconstructive perspective of Dream of the Red Chamber, the ”double reading skills” are adopted to collapse the texture. The author embedded the prosperity, which is ”texture deconstructs itself” in the novel. And that will simulates the readers deconstruct the texture naturally. Designed by the author, the remarks on Dream of the Red Chamber of Zhi Yanzhai is the trace connected two worlds between truth and illusion. This arrangement enhances the deconstructions in the texture, and further, extends the endless readings and interpretations.

The Dream of the Red Chamber. English trans. Florence and Isabel McHugh of the German translation by Dr. Franz Kuhn, Der Traum der roten Kammer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958. 50s. - Dream of the Red Chamber. By Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in. Trans. Chi-chen Wang. Preface by Mark Van Doren. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1958. $6.00. - Volume 18 Issue 3

Reviewed by: Reflections on “Dream of the Red Chamber” Ying Wang (bio) Liu Zaifu. Reflections on “Dream of the Red Chamber.” Translated by Shu Yunzhong. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. xviii, 301 pp. Hardcover $109.95, ISBN 978-1-604975-24-6. The 2008 English translation of Liu Zaifu’s book Reflections on “Dream of the Red Chamber” offers a delightful, fascinating, and enlightening reading of Cao Xueqin’s eighteenth-century masterpiece Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamber). Liu’s reading, which tries to be free of the conventions of scholarship and scholarly writing, is described as an “intuitive approach of Zen” (p. xiii) by Gao Xingjian (winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature) in his foreword to the book. Consisting of casual literary notes jotted down by the author over the period of a decade and some of his topical essays written for speeches and publications, Liu’s [End Page 347] book is, indeed, unconventional in format and structure. However, the author does not take his critique of Cao Xueqin’s novel lightly, and at least two important theoretical and aesthetic questions are repeatedly raised, discussed, and expounded in this book, showing the author’s serious intention to contribute further to the scholarship of Honglou meng. Both of Liu’s questions are generated from Wang Guowei’s (1877–1927) salient study titled A Critique of “Dream of the Red Chamber.” While challenging Wang Guowei’s classification of Honglou meng as a work of mere tragedy, Liu Zaifu applauds Wang’s emphasis on the “existence of a spiritual realm” in Cao Xueqin’s novel and makes a further exploration of this “spiritual realm” the central task of his reappraisal (pp. 137–140). In his 1904 critique, Wang Guowei praises Honglou meng’s successful use of tragedy on the grounds that it is subversive to both the Chinese literary tradition and the conventional reader’s taste. Analyzing Cao Xueqin’s novel according to Schopenhauer’s three types of tragedy, Wang identifies Honglou meng as the most tragic type—in which characters “are so situated with regard to one another that their position forces them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do one another the greatest injury without any one of them being entirely in the wrong”1—in comparison to the type of tragedy that is caused either by exceptional wickedness of a character or by a colossal accident or error. Deeply influenced by Shopenhauer’s vision of the world as a ceaseless, destructive struggle for existence, Wang Guowei’s concept of tragedy and his interpretation of the underlying philosophy of Honglou meng are permeated with a pessimistic view of life and the conviction of release (or renouncing of the world). According to Liu Zaifu, Wang’s appraisal is only partial in terms of the literary modes employed in the eighteenth-century novel. To Liu, Honglou meng is not merely a “tragedy of tragedies” as defined by Wang; it is also a work revealing absurdity in the human world—therefore, a novel of comedy with a modern flavor. As indicated by Liu, “the predominantly tragic tone in Dream of the Red Chamber is mixed with traces of the absurdity in the human world. Drama of absurdity is an extreme form of comedy. Originating from traditional comedy and yet different from traditional comedy, it displays the worthlessness and meaninglessness of life in an extreme manner. . . . [T]he absurd is not just a strategy but also an insightful and critical reference to reality” (p. 147). Cao Xueqin’s effort at revealing the absurd nature of the human world can be observed, according to Liu, from his numerous examples that mock futile pursuit of worldly gain in the novel, including allegorical verses and stories, such as “Won-Done Song,” sung by the lame Taoist priest in chapter 1; “Mandarin’s Life Preserver” in chapter 4; and “Precious Mirror of Desire” in chapter 12. There are, of course, characters of absurdity portrayed by Cao Xueqin as well. Jia Yucun, Liu claims, “constitutes the most absurd part of the novel,” as he makes absurd judgments about his life and political career as a result of being “entangled in [a] web of social relationships...

Reviewed by: The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China Ying Wang (bio) Ellen Widmer. The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. xiv, 407 pp. Hardcover $49.95, ISBN 0–674–02146–0. Ellen Widmer’s newly published book, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China, challenges two conventional views in the field of Chinese fiction: that the nineteenth century saw a decline of vernacular novels and that women did not start to write fiction until the turn of the twentieth century. A combination of detailed historical documentation and perceptive literary analysis, Widmer’s book offers the first extensive study of women’s relationships with fiction in a period when fiction reading and writing were off-limits to Chinese women. Her findings in this study are fascinating and groundbreaking as they enlighten us about some important developments in Chinese fiction that have been previously unnoticed or neglected. Several recent studies focusing on nineteenth-century vernacular fiction include David Der-wei Wang’s 1997 book, Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911, and Patrick Hanan’s 2004 book, Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. In echoing both Wang and Hanan, Widmer sees the nineteenth century as a period of innovation, pregnant with many new possibilities. More significantly, however, she further reinforces this conviction by bringing to light women’s participation in fiction writing. If nothing else, the single fact of two surges of women writers and critics in the genre of vernacular fiction would be sufficient to mark the nineteenth century as a unique and critical period in the history of Chinese literature. In a format of two parts (with five chapters in the first part and three chapters in the second), Widmer’s book focuses on two important historical periods of the nineteenth century (1791–1830; 1877 and after) when two genres, tanci (prosimetric narrative) and zhanghui xiaoshuo (full-length vernacular novel), either became a women’s narrative form or inspired some elite women writers to try their hands at it. The first part of the book maps out the initial involvement of women in the genre of fiction circa 1830 and introduces some prominent figures who were instrumental to such a development. According to Widmer, the 1791 publication of the Cheng Gao edition of Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamber) was a milestone for women’s reception and production of fiction. A significant change was apparent not only in the clear evidence of women’s participation in fiction writing and critiquing, but also through the conscious efforts of male writers to elicit a female audience and to reflect women’s views in their own novels. As Widmer indicates, Li Ruzhen’s (1763–1830) Jinghua Yuan (Flowers in the mirror) qualifies as an early example of male support of female talent, and it demonstrates [End Page 267] Li’s attempt to reach out to a female readership by employing ambiguous rhetoric intended for both men and women while enlisting women’s endorsements of the novel. In parallel with Jinghua yuan, Widmer informs us, women writers turned to fiction directly for the purposes of promoting personal beliefs, expressing inner emotions, or even economic gain. If, writing in the form of tanci, Hou Zhi (1764–1829) and Liang Desheng (1771–1847) lectured their readers (mainly women, but not exclusive of men) on the moral codes of guixiu (gentlewomen), Wang Duan (1793–1939) became the writer of zhanghui xiaoshuo, expressing her political views about dynastic change, and Yun Zhu (1771–1833) became the critic, providing her emotional and poetic response to Honglou meng. Female writers, editors, and critics of tanci and zhanghui xiaoshuo, although still a small number, seemed to have carved out a niche in the field of fiction for themselves that simply did not exist before. Widmer concludes the first part of her book by examining how women responded to Honglou meng and by comparing the early nineteenth century to the early Qing (mid seventeenth century). Here we are informed that existing sources indicate there are forty or fifty poems...

The purpose of this article is to explore the historical and artistic connections between the novel and opera «Dream of the Red Chamber». Cao Xueqin (a Chinese writer of the Qing Dynasty) wrote the novel “Dream of the Red Chamber” based on his life experiences, family history and the realities of feudal society. Chinese-Americans Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang created the self-titled opera based on Cao Xueqin’s novel, which is an ideal example of Chinese and Western cultural integration. The novel and opera “Dream of the Red Chamber” use some moments from Cao Xueqin’s family history. The prototypes of the main characters were Cao Xueqin himself and his three wives. The plot of the novel and opera, which is based on the relationship between Baoyu, Daiyu and Baochai, shows different sides of the relationship, as well as the peculiarities of people’s lives in a feudal society. Set designer Ye Jintian created the costumes for the characters in the opera based on the description of clothes made by Cao Xueqin in the novel “Dream of the Red Chamber”, which allows us to understand the social culture, customs, and personalities of the Qing Dynasty better. The novel and the opera are based on true history, depicting the rise and fall of families in Chinese society, love stories between characters, and traditional Chinese customs and traditions. At the same time, the plot of the novel and the opera criticizes the principles of feudal society, which is aimed at constant political rivalry and the harsh, peremptory enslavement of the people.

The art of ”The Dream of the Red Chamber” is deeply rooted in lyrical tradition, wherein the poem genre plays the single most important role. This paper studies the poetic theory and practice as revealed in ”The Dream of the Red Chamber” and shows that the practice of poetry in the novel contradicts the poetic theory expressed there. The identified contradiction between theory and practice of the poetry is named ”pseudomorphosis”. Via both diachronic and synchronic approaches, and in the context of both historical and textual analyses, I clarify the respective correspondence of poetic practice of ”The Dream of the Red Chamber” and Xing-Ling 性靈說 on the one hand, and the poetic theory and Ge-Diao 格調派 on the other hand. In addition, many multi-dimensional contrasts between poetic theory and practice in ”The Dream of the Red Chamber” are exposed, such as orthodoxy/heresy, form/content, dominance/protest, mainstream/latent-flowing and poetic civilization/poetic mind. These contrasts are investigated in the context of the fundamental struggle of ”The Dream of the Red Chamber”, the confrontation between canonic convention and individual freedom.

Linguistic Hybridity in the Poetry Translation of Hong Lou Meng