A Study Of Characters In A Dream Of Red Mansions

This dissertation studies Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions, a book of Criticism published in 1940s. Tts author Wang Kunlun received Marxist historical materialism and flexibly integrated the Hermeneutics of historical materialism into his research on A Dream of Red Mansions in 1930s, making Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions a book of typical significance of its theory, not only in his own time but also in modern time. Constrained in the writing circumstances and social environment, the quotation in Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions, some of which was totally different from the Zhi’s Edition and Cheng’s edition was of some chaotic. There were also lots of Variants in the quotation of Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions. From the differences in the quotation, we know that there were not much textual material that Wang Kunlun could refer. In despite of this, Wang Kunlun seized the main features of the characters in A Dream of Red Mansions, and evaluated them accurately and academically. Up till now, there have been a number of books commenting on characters in A Dream of Red Mansions, but seldom could rival this book of Wang Kunlun’s. This is not only because Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions bears its own system and magnificent view, and Wang Kunlun has a good guiding knowledge of Marx Methodology, but what we must attach importance to is Wang Kunlun’s interpretive standpoint. He is by no means limited to the use of advanced methodology. By reading the book intensively, we can see that Wang Kunlun put priority to "Human beings" when commenting on characters. He admitted the variety of human nature and did not judge characters according to established social rules or norm of morality. He also evaluated characters whom he disliked objectively, and analyzed the reasons of their conduct. In this way, he made Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions more convincing. Even though after the founding of People’s Republic of China, due to the influence of external pressure and vulgar sociology, Wang Kunlun somewhat changed his Hermeneutics, which was partially reflected in the revised version of Characters in A Dream of Red Mansions, but out of his respect for human nature and deep research on the text of A Dream of Red Mansion, he kept commenting on characters based on humanism, and in turn, he could better understand the aesthetic pursuit of Cao Xueqin. This kind of two-way benign interaction created a rational Hermeneutic dimension whose aesthetic paradigm will exert a profound impact on works of the same kind in later generations.