Farmer Coming to Capital: The Imaginative Narrative of Nobility in the Sequels of The Dream of the Red Chamber
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Li, Jui-Chu
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the “narrative of nobility” in The Dream of Red Chamber (Hong Lou Meng) and its sequels. The study about The Dream of the Red Chamber is also about Chinese elite culture, from material level up to ideological level. The nobles in this novel accumulate tremendous fortune, and live in luxury, but to afford the expense, over a thousand people in the family must keep in perfect order, which is extremely complex. What lies beneath the order is the spirit of nobility, which symbolize elegance, discipline and virtue. Cao Xueqin and Writer are of nobilty, they are proud of their class origin, and criticized those writers and commentators who can’t understand the spirit of nobility as ""farmers coming to capital"". Those authors of sequels didn’t have the same experience as Cao Xueqin so that they can only write the noble life with their imagination, and that’s how the imaginative narrative of nobility comes. Therefore, this article first view how the first eighty chapters of The Dream of Red Chamber builds narrative of nobility, then compares with the after forty chapters written by Gao E and the three representative sequels Hou Hong Lou Meng, Qi Lou Zhong Meng, Bu Hong Lou Meng, continued to explore the reason why the book can’t match its redecessor creative background reasons.
Subjects
sequels of The Dream of the Red Camber
Hou Hong Lou Meng
Qi Lou Zhong Meng
Bu Hong Lou Meng
the spirit of the nobility
the imaginative narrative of nobility.
Type
thesis
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