Reading The Dream of the Red Chamber
FRSEM-UA.461.1.001.
Instructor: Jing Wang
Email: jw82@nyu.edu
Office phone no. 212-998-9067
The Dream of the Red Chamber is a splendid work produced by Cao Xueqin in the
middle of the18th century. Following the traditional form of Chinese fiction, known as
“the chaptered novel,” it covers a vast terrain of Chinese culture and social life and is
widely regarded as the culmination of the vernacular novel of imperial China and a
synthesis of Chinese aesthetic and philosophical traditions.
Originally titled “The Story of the Stone,” the novel tells the story of a sentient stone
thrown into the everyday world in its human reincarnation. With reference to the
Goddess Nuwa repairing the sky, the novel raises a series of questions concerning the
relationship between heaven, earth, human beings, and things; the origin of what it is to
be human; its spiritual nature; the relationship between emotion and talent; and the
development, the suppression, and the waste of talent. At the center of all this is the true
meaning of the human emotion and affection (qing), and their relationship to the moral
order and social-cultural convention (li). What constitutes the “story” is thus a narrative
account of the stone’s worldly experiences, its tragic fate and its reflections on a heartless
world.
In The Dream of the Red Chamber, one sees the novel’s intellectual strength seamlessly
combined with its artistic and stylistic power. The novel’s structure is underscored by a
whole range of contradictions and binary opposites: the rise and fall of individual and
collective fortunes, the blossoming and the withering of youth, beauty, and life;
momentous gathering and sad dispersal; sympathy and apathy, attachment and
detachment, passion and indifference; the beautiful and the ugly; the good and the evil.
The original design as it was envisioned by Cao Xueqin himself entails 108 chapters,
which are divided in the middle to form two symmetrical halves, each including 54
chapters, that stand for the swift change and radical contrast of life. The intricate
foreshadowing and echoing and the subtle mutual references between the two parts gives
rise to a rich construction of duality and multiplicity in meaning, symbolism, metaphor
and allegory. Within this overall formal arrangement, the novel is punctuated at every 9th
chapter with a pause, an episodic end, marking either the conclusion or a new beginning
of a major development.
In terms of literary characterization, The Dream of the Red Chamber presents an “endless
scroll painting”. There are several hundreds of characters in the novel, each and
everyone of them distinct, vivid and memorable, occupying his or her own concrete
world, possessing his or her own experiential and emotional particularity. The 108 girls’
stories all evolve around that of Baoyu—the reincarnated stone---but only to show their
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own liveliness. In many ways The Dream of the Red Chamber is about youthful love.
However, “love” in this context has transcended the narrow confines of conventional love
affairs and attended the “great compassion, great understanding” of an enlarged and allencompassing Self.
Such convoluted and neatly arranged structure, coupled with a dazzling array of
characters, together turns The Dream of Red Chamber into one of the most complex and
colorful novels ever known.
Schedule
Week 1. Introduction.
1)
2)
3)
4)
Significance in history of Chinese literature
The writer and his time
Different versions;
“Red Studies”: different schools
Week 2. Chapter 1
Discussion points:
1) Origin of the Stone
2) Motives of writing the story
3) The ideas of Buddhism and Taoism
4) Jia Yu-cun, and the Zhen family
5) Song of Bu-liao(Won-Done Song)
Week 3. Chapter 2-4
Discussion points:
1) The first meeting of Bao-yu and Dai-yu
2) The Rong-guo House
3) Mandarin’s Life-Preserver
Week 4. Chapter 5
Discussion points:
1) The Land of Illusion
2) Jinling’s twelve beauties (in main register and two supplementary registers)
3) Lures of senses
4) Lustfulness
5) The twelve songs of “The Dream of Red Chamber”
Week 5. Chapter 6-9
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Discussion points:
1) Display of the Rong-guo House in Grannie Liu’s eyes
2) Flowers from the royal court
3) Lady Qin’s brother
4) The Golden Lock and the Magic Jade
5) An uproar in the classroom
Week 6. Chapter 10-16
Discussion points:
1) Xi-feng, and the birthday celebration in Ning-guo house
2) The death of Jia-rui, and the Mirror of Romance
3) The death of lady Qin, and her last words in Xi-feng’s dream
4) Qin-zhong’s pleasures and his journey into night
Week 7. Chapter 17-18
Discussion points:
1) The construction of Prospect Garden
2) A test of Bao-yu’s talent in literature
3) Yuan-chun’s family reunion
Week 8. Chapter 19-27
Discussion points:
1) Bao-yu and his maids: Xi-ren (Aroma), Qing-wen (Skybright)
2) The artful Ping-er (Patience) and her masters
3) Bao-yu’s awakening, and the lantern riddles
4) A shared reading of “Western Chamber”
5) Secret love between a maid and a young master
6) Two old acquaintances
7) Dai-yu weeps for fallen blossoms by the Flowers’ Grave
Week 9. Chapter 28-36
Discussion points:
1) Male bond and the drinking game
2) The Summer Festival, and the new heights of passion
3) Jin Chuan-er (Golden)’s death, and Ling Guan (Charmente)’s love
4) A torn fan, and the lost kylin
5) The Chastisement, and the old handkerchief
6) Aroma’s marital settlement
Week 10. Chapter 37-45
Discussion points:
1) The Crab-Flower Club, and the themes of chrysanthemum
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2)
3)
4)
5)
Grannie Liu’s revisit
Superior tea, and vulgar accommodation
Xi-feng’s birthday, and a young man’s remorse
A sisterly understanding, and an autumnal melancholy
Week 11. Chapter 46-54
Discussion points:
1) The old master’s awkward mission
2) A fearful beating, and a hasty getaway
3) Xiang-ling (Caltrop)’s poetry learning, and the black-hearted Jia Yu-cun
4) Flowers in dazzling snow
5) Xi-feng’s sisterly love, and the admirable Qing-wen
6) The Spring Festival
Week 12. Chapter 55-63
Discussion points:
1) A capable daughter, and a foolish concubine
2) Another Jade Boy, and the trouble with mirrors
3) A test to Bao-yu
4) Chun-yan (Swallow), Caiyun (Sunset), Fan-guan (Parfumee) and Mamma
He
5) The Cook Liu and her daughter
6) The Death of Jia-jing
Week 13. Chapter 64-72
Discussion points:
1) The death of two sisters
2) The Kites
3) Financial troubles, and disputes
Week 14. Chapter 73-80
Discussion points:
1) A raid on Prospect Garden
2) The lives of Xi-chun and Ying-chun
3) The Mid-autumn Festival, and the flute –playing
4) The linked verses, and the presence of Miao-yu
5) The death of Qing-wen (Sky-bright), and the Invocation of Hibiscus
6) Lady Wang
7) Xue Pan and his termagant wife
Week 15. Final Exam
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