| Centering on the life of Jia Baoyu, Honglou meng ( The Story of the Stone or The Dream of the Red Chamber) explores a wealth of human experiences. Countering the celebrated notion of religious quest and the belief in the hero's lack of memory, this dissertation argues that Baoyu's rite of passage is a journey of awakening to mundane fascination, divided into three phases marked by his entrance into and exit from the Prospect Garden: the pre-Garden phase nurtures his libido with lures of carnal desire, the Garden phase fosters lyrical ideals and romantic love, and the post-Garden phase thrusts him across the threshold to adulthood and subjects him to social order. By narrating Baoyu's growth, the novel questions the traditions of erotic fiction, drama, and Confucian discourse by embracing lust as the prerequisite for love, addressing the limitations of text, performance, and emotions, and renouncing the orthodox paradigm of marriage and officialdom.; In addition to the multiple aspects of life, the journey of Honglou meng is also a story of the book itself, a lifetime lived by Stone of the mythic realm, who is a character, a narrator, as well as the material substance that carries the text. As a character, Stone simultaneously fulfills the roles of the hero's other self, the pendant of mysterious origin hanging on his neck, and the observer of his life. As a narrator, Stone pays tribute to the author. As the material substance, Stone is the monument that carries the text, the physical evidence of the rise and fall in the mortal world. However, even though the story of Stone is inscribed on a stele, in the process of reading, commenting, transmitting, and editing, the novel assumes a life in flux both internally and externally, which eloquently challenges the idea of urtext. By manipulating the identities of Stone, Honglou meng not only redefines an individual's search of self-knowledge but also reinvents the notion of fiction, creating a quest achieved by the practice of writing and reading, exercised by the joint effort of the author and the reader. |
