Front cover image for Ideal and actual in the story of the stone

Ideal and actual in the story of the stone

Dore Jesse Levy (Author)
"The Story of the Stone (also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber), written in the mid-eighteenth century by Cao Xuegin, is considered China's greatest novel - but its length and narrative complexity have proven daunting to many modern readers. In Ideal and Actual in The Story of the Stone, exteemed scholar of Asian literature Dore J. Levy uses both traditional sinology and up-to-date methods of leterary analysis to introduce this classic work to first-time readers, while at the same time offering new interpretative strategies for advanced students and scholars. Drawing on comparative literature, sociology, religion, and medicine, she explores how Cao Xuegin's masterpiece confronts the chasm between social, emotional, and spiritual ideals and their translation into day-to-day reality. Levy focuses on four major themes: the subversion of tradiitonal family patterns; the meaning of illness and the role of medicine in a society where Buddhist concepts of karma and retribution coexist with pragmatic notions of the human body based on medical knowledge; the importance of poetry in the everyday life of the Chinese aristocracy; and poetry as a vehicle for spiritual liberation." -- Back cover
Print Book, English, 1999
Columbia University Press, New York, 1999
xi, 213 pages ; 24 cm
9780231114066, 9780231114073, 0231114060, 0231114079
39905676
1. Ideal and Actual, Real and Not-real 2. "Family Togetherness": Patterns of Authority and the Subversion of Family Structure 3. Preexisting Conditions: Retributory Illness and the Limits of Medicine 4. A World Apart: Poetry and Society in the Garden of Total Vision 5. The Chiming of the Void: Poetry as a Vehicle to Enlightenment
catdir.loc.gov Table of Contents