THESIS
2021
1 online resource (xvi, 205 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Abstract
Focusing on the receptions and transformations of Dream of the Red Chamber
(Honglou meng) in late Qing and modern China, this dissertation examines the ways in
which this eighteenth-century literary canon was constantly being re-conceived,
rewritten and reinvented during this momentous era. Through the delineation of the
transformative role that Dream of the Red Chamber played in modern cultural
production, this dissertation explores the intertwined critical issues concerning literary
modernity, emotion, gender and modern culture.
Chapter One introduces the conceptual and methodological meanings of the term
“Dream Factory,” while Chapter Eight describes the great work’s afterlife in
contemporary age. The main body consists of two parts with six chapters. Focusing on
the turn of the 20...[
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Focusing on the receptions and transformations of Dream of the Red Chamber
(Honglou meng) in late Qing and modern China, this dissertation examines the ways in
which this eighteenth-century literary canon was constantly being re-conceived,
rewritten and reinvented during this momentous era. Through the delineation of the
transformative role that Dream of the Red Chamber played in modern cultural
production, this dissertation explores the intertwined critical issues concerning literary
modernity, emotion, gender and modern culture.
Chapter One introduces the conceptual and methodological meanings of the term
“Dream Factory,” while Chapter Eight describes the great work’s afterlife in
contemporary age. The main body consists of two parts with six chapters. Focusing on
the turn of the 20
th century, Part One elucidates the paradoxical nexus between private
emotions and national narratives in Nanwuyeman’s New Story of Stone, the public
sphere and the sentimental cultivation of Xu Zhenya’s Poetry on Dream, and the
complicated reception of the symbolic figure Lin Daiyu. Part Two enters 1930s, surveys
the comic sequels and adaptions of Dream in modern metropolis, how republican
writers endeavored to imitate, emulate and recycle the “aesthetics of delicate materiality”
in Dream, how this great novel working as a form of cultural capital and a public
resource, has been consumed and reconfigured in modern commercial culture.
I argue that at a time of drastic cultural changes, Dream of the Red Chamber was
not a static repertory, but rather it functioned as a dynamic discursive space that
interacts with modern people’s feelings, thoughts, psychology, and the complexity of
their historical situations. Through detailed analyses of the first-hand, original materials
covering a range of literary and visual genres, this dissertation sheds new light on the
roles of the canon and tradition in the formation of Chinese literary modernity.
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