Tuomerei Red Studies Continuation: New Exploration of the Thought Origins and Cultural Inheritance of "Dream of the Red Chamber"

Author: Tu Mo Re
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: Tu Mo Re's Red Studies do not entirely deny the special relationship between Cao Xueqin and Dream of the Red Chamber in today's mainstream Red Studies. Dream of the Red Chamber was indeed copied by Cao Xueqin in the mid-Qianlong era, but its creation date was in the early Qing Dynasty, about 60 years earlier than Cao Xueqin. The author of Dream of the Red Chamber, the "I" who deeply repents in the work, and the prototype of the protagonist Baoyu, are the great Qing Dynasty literary figure, playwright, and poet Hong Sheng. The prototype of the Grand View Garden in the book is a group of Jiangnan gardens in Xixi, Hangzhou, the hometown of Hong Sheng. The prototype of the twelve beauties of Jinling in the book is the "Twelve Beauties of Jiaoyuan," the sisters of Hong Sheng. The prototype of the "Four Great Families" in the book, described as "centipede-like, dead but not stiff," are the four "century-old aristocratic families" Hong, Huang, Qian, and Gu who declined in the early Qing Dynasty. The inspiration for Hong Sheng's creation of Dream of the Red Chamber was the bitter recollection of the beautiful youth of himself and his sisters after experiencing three "family disasters," coupled with a painful reflection on the tragic ending of the "boundless white land." Tu Mo Re's Red Studies not only clearly reveals the time, place, and character origins of Dream of the Red Chamber according to the three elements of literary creation but also, guided by historical materialism and dialectics, proves through historical and literary research that Dream of the Red Chamber is a product of the special history of the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, a product of the "cultural pulse of late Ming," rather than the invention of a single writer's "genius."