| "Complementary Bipolarity" is a fundamental concept put forward by Andrew Henry Plaks when he studied the allegory of the Dream of the Red Chamber, which is a new theory when he applied Chinese ancient thought of yin-yang wu-xing to the study of the narrative structure in the Dream. It means that the author of the Dream not only intended to put the plots of the novel in the ceaseless two-term alternation such as joy and sorrow, union and separation, prosperity and decline, but also carefully created the logical relationship or the correspondences between those life experience. The characteristic of the arrangement of the plots lies in the ceaseless alternation from joy within sorrow to sorrow within joy, or from union within separation to separation within union, instead of a dialectical process from a dilemma to an end, or from disillusion to awakening. In the view of Andrew Henry Plaks, Chinese literature presents "a projected spatial vision of totality", while Western literature is "dualistic and dialectical". However, his conclusion above is criticized by C.T. Hsia. Although the study of Andrew Henry Plaks leaves quite a lot of pity, however, his methods develops a new way for the western scholars, which makes the study of the allegory of the Dream more and more popular in America sinological academia. |
