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

Yu, Anthony C.

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9780691015613: Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691015619 ISBN 13: 9780691015613

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997

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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.

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From the Inside Flap:

"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

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.

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