Dream of the Red Chamber: A Fable of Love

Author: Yi Jinsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-12-01
Features: The original manuscript of this book was written as a doctoral dissertation with the same title by the author while pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington in the early 1990s. After completion and microfilming, this dissertation was one of the most frequently referenced materials in Olin Main Library at the University of Washington. However, due to various personal reasons, the author was unable to further revise and publish the paper.
Cao Xueqin is the greatest and most complex writer in the history of Chinese literature, and Dream of the Red Chamber is also the greatest and most complex work in the history of Chinese literature. Dream of the Red Chamber tells the tragic love and marriage story between the feudal aristocratic youth Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai, and centers on this, depicting the rise and fall of the four great families—Jia, Wang, Shi, and Xue—representative of the era, with the Jia family being the focus. It exposes the darkness and evils of the late feudal society, as well as its irreconcilable internal contradictions, and delivers a powerful critique of the decadent feudal ruling class and the crumbling feudal system, leaving readers to anticipate its inevitable downfall.
This book is a great work of both high ideological significance and high artistic quality. From the ideological tendencies reflected in the book, the author demonstrates preliminary democratic thought. He critically examines the darkness of the real society, including the courts and official circles, the corruption of the feudal aristocratic class and their families, the feudal imperial examination system, marriage system, servant system, and hierarchical system, as well as the corresponding social ruling ideology—Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, and social moral concepts. He also proposes faint but preliminary democratic ideals and, which are a subtle reflection of the budding factors of capitalist economic development at the time.