Upon The Literary Criticism History In The 20^th Century Of A Dream Of Red Mansions

As the one of three most famous schools in the 20th century, A Dream of Red Mansions has an important role in chinese politics, history and literature. The thesis takes the literary criticism history in the 20th century of this work as the research object, and making the summary and conclusion of this period history, thesis will study the diachronic and synchronic relationship in different critical discourses, analyse the polysemous theme, the multiple characters, the multi-dimentional narrative structure, the diversity aesthetic connatations and the various linguistic forms, and finally show the literatural characteristic of this classic novel.There are six chapters in the thesis. Chapter one discussed the main ideas about the theme of A Dream of Red Mansions in the 20th century. In the early time, many people held the homogeneous views, such as love story, political novel, social novel, alluding somebody, patching the hole in the sky, etc. Later, people went through the transition from the homogeneous theme to pluralist theme, there are double themes, three themes, multiple themes and the localized explanation with the introducing of the western literary theory. Reviewing the history of theme research about in 20th century, from the debate of the homogeneous theme to the formation of the multi-structure of the theme, it showed the respect to the text, and people gradually have calm, objective and tolerant attitude in research. The theme resides in the novel objectively, the writer's words and the characters on the stone speak with the readers in an unchanged way seemly, every reader, however, undersdand and explain the meaning with different personal way. Every time, the readers will have new interpretation according to the pre-undersdanding. The interpretation is the fusion of defferent horizons, A Dream of Red Mansions will always stay in a multi-demention that waiting for people to interpret it.Chapter two and three are focused on the key images of fiction, which include Jia bao-yu, Lin dai-yu, Xue bao-chai, Wang xi-feng, Hua xi-ren, Qing wen, Shi xiang-yun, Jia tan-chun. The second chapter, with the realistic aesthetics view, analyzed the characters'image and personality in detail. Because Lin dai-yu and Xue bao-chai are the controversial topics, we researched them in a devided discussion firstly, and then analyse them together. The opinions, from opposed to each other to both of them are all nice girl and then to complementary to each other, have changed day by day, in addition to the ethical judgement, people gradually like to use historical, cultural, philosophical, easthetical judgement. The changes have been extended to the second thoughts of whole chinese traditional culture, and the characters analysis has transcended the usual limits. After two hundred years, Lin dai-yu and Xue bao-chai have new meanings and interpretations by the end of 20th century. And the discussion about most of other characters in the fiction all nearly experienced the same change. The third chapter is based on the pluralistic attitude. The first three parts are mainly give the commentary to the Suoyin Group and the Textual Researchers and the social history criticism, analysed the contribution and the negligence of them. The final three parts start from the comparative study, mytho-archetypical criticism, and psychoanalysis, the thesis discussed the figures' similarity and the difference of A Dream of Red Mansions between the eastern and the western novles, and traced the collective unconscious of primitive myth and ancient totem worship, and explored the artistic value of the novel by analyse the characters' complex psychological activity and special spiritual quality.The object of the chapter four is interpretation of narrative structure of the novel and the study trend of it. The narrative structure research is similar to the progress of theme research, and has close relationship to it. Some people think there is only one clue in the novel, such as the love story, the progress of delication about Jia family, Jia bao-yu's rebellious personality,etc. While other people believe that the novel, at least have two clues, either there is distinction between the primary and the secondary or not, their opinions are almostly based on the former. As the research goes further, people's view gradurally undergone the transformation from the single-clue structure to double-clues structure, and then from the linear structure to the network structure. It indicated that people pay much attention to the text and there has a great progress in the research of the narrative structure., and the changes that from linear thinking mode to three-dimentional thingking mode have taken place. There is a difficult in the study of the surface and the deep structure. With the writer's excellent methods, which have clear illustration in the first five chapters and the important figures, the well-planned novel is complicated but in order. Apart from this, there is the symmetric structure of Yin-Yang philosophy, and the four seasons structure of chinese ancient agriculture society in the novel, and the plots, like the society and the nature go through its cycles, showed the process of creation, development, prosperity and decline. All of them explored the connatation and artistic space that the novel has, and improved the attraction and the philosophical of the work.Chapter five, from probings into artistic conception, theories of creation, aesthetic taste, etc, deeply discussed the artistic characteristics of the work. The first part analysed some poetic and artistic conception, such as Jia bao-yu reads chinese opera, Lin dai-yu buries fallen flowers, Xue bao-chai catches butterflies, Xue bao-qin stands in the snow, etc. The novel inherited the tradition of the combination of form and spirit and the fusion of feeling and setting, so it built an aesthetic mood. Cao xue-qin has no works about the literary theory, but he, according to the characters' language, illustrated the theory of writing and appreciation deeply. For example, when he writes the poems he always try to find the exact words, and he payed much attention to "mood and mind" and the artistic blankness. His poetic theories are based on chinese classical phelosophy and aesthetics, so his work is the aggregation of chinese classical phelosophy and aesthetics that developed to the end of feudal society. And the third part of this chapter give comments on the tragic and the comedic factors, and concinnity and magnificence, which are the important styles in the work, and secondly discussed right and wrong about Wang guo-wei and his work. People constantly criticize him, but most of the criticism are built on Wang guo-wei's criticism system. At last, although A Dream of Red Mansions is a tragedy, it's not lack the comedic factors. Cao xeu-qin is proficient in the interaction of gravity and humor, the combination of tragedy and comedy, and the fusion of concinntiy and magnificance, so the work is full of such lingering charm.Chapter six, take the language expression as the object, discussed the characters' language, writer's narrative language, and the diachronie feature of the language of the novel. Firstly, the characters'language is the main tool to create the character's personality traits, and the dialogue is an important carrier of characters'language, they are personalized and diverse language. In addition to, the characters'poems have a significant function in character potrayal and display of the plots, they inherited the literary tradition that Poem Expressing Ideal. The poems make the character's disposition more rich and varied, and deepened the theme of the novel. Secondly, Cao xue-qin broke the narrative way of chinese ancient ficitions, and the writer doesn't play the role of omnipotent God, he undertook the narrative function with the narrator together. Writer used the first person, the second person, and the third person differently, he kept a lukewarm relationship with narrator and hero by using complete perspective and limited perspective, and all of these make the novel formed an unique narrative style. Finally, A Dream of Red Mansions occupies the important position in the diachronic evolutionary process of chinese classic novel. Writer used the art form of the combination of poems and proses creatively, and followed the trend that chinese language transfer from elegant to vulgar and the vernacular transfer from vulgar to elegant. Cao xue-qin is a linguistic master, who used plenty of chinese proverbs, idioms, allegorical sayings and so on, they are brief and incisive and make this classical novel more modernization.Conclusion. The aim of the thesis is to discuss the literary criticism history of the 20th century of A Dream of Red Mansions, to analyse the themes, characters'images, narrative structure, aesthetic connotation, language expression, and to summarize the literary traits in various kinds of critical discourse, and finally return to the real text. The retrospect and the reflection about the literary criticism history in the past hundred years is intent to construct the study of this great novel in the new century, and integrate the document, text and culture authentically.