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.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Yu's book is one of the most important studies on Hongloumeng to appear in recent decades. It is full of insights and refreshing readings. It is a work of erudition and intellectual discernment, and it will undoubtedly become a classic in Honglou meng study. One of its many important contributions is its success in drawing our attention to the centrality of desire in premodern Chinese culture and its intimate relationship with Chinese literature.
From the Back Cover
"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
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
