Enchantment and Disenchantment (ebook)

Argumento de Enchantment and Disenchantment (ebook)

In a famous episode of the eighteenth-century masterpiece The Dream of the Red Chamber, the goddess Disenchantment introduces the hero, Pao-yü, to the splendors and dangers of the Illusory Realm of Great Void. The goddess, one of the divine women in Chinese literature who inspire contradictory impulses of attachment and detachment, tells Pao-yü that the purpose of his dream visit is "disenchantment through enchantment," or "enlightenment through love." Examining a range of genres from different periods, Wai-yee Li reveals the persistence of the dialectic embodied by the goddess: while illusion originates in love and desire, it is only through love and desire that illusion can be transcended.

Li begins by defining the context of these issues through the study of an entire poetic tradition, placing special emphasis on the role of language and of the feminine element. Then, focusing on the "dream plays" by T'ang Hsien-tsu, she turns to the late Ming, an age which discovers radical subjectivity, and goes on to explore a seventeenth-century collection of classical tales, Records of the Strange from the Liao-chai Studio by P'u Sung-ling. The latter half of the book is devoted to a thorough analysis of The Dream of the Red Chamber, the most profound treatment of the dialectic of enchantment and disenchantment, love and enlightenment, illusion and reality.

Originally published in 1993.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.0Acknowledgments Abbreviations Ch. 1 The Genealogy of Disenchantment 3 Fu Rhetoric and the Fictional Imagination 10 Fu Rhetoric and the Feminine Principle 17 The Topos of the Ambiguous Divine Woman 23 The Inward Turn of the Topos of the Ambiguous Divine Woman 33 The Progeny of the Ambiguous Divine Woman 41 Ch. 2 The Late-Ming Moment 47 Comic Reconciliation in The Peony Pavilion 50 Detachment through Attachment in The Story of Nan-ko 64 The Ironic Vision of The Story of Han-tan 69 The Lyrical Solution in The Palace of Everlasting Life 77 The Philosophical Solution in Peach Blossom Fan 81 Enchantment, Disenchantment, and Self-Representation 83 Ch. 3 Desire and Order in Liao-chai chih-i 89 The Confucian Solution to the Problem of Sensual Love 89 Pu Sung-ling and the Taming of the Strange 92 Metamorphosis and Desire 100 Desire and the Order of Formal Symmetry 105 Desire and the Logic of Ironic Inversion 114 The Internal Balance of Desire: Mediation and Complementary Heroines 122 The Structures of Order 136 Ch. 4 Beginnings: Enchantment and Irony in Hung-lou meng 152 The Rhetoric of Illusion and the Difficulty of Beginning 159 Flaw and Supplement 163 Problems in Literary Communication 175 The Fate of a Rhetorical Figure 179 From Myth to History 185 The Illusory Realm of Great Void 190 Ch. 5 Self-Reflexivity and the Lyrical Ideal in Hung-lou meng 202 Lust of the Mind 203 Stone as Narrator 210 Enlightenment through Love 216 Ch. 6 Disenchantment and Order in Hung-lou meng 231 The World of the Precious Mirror of Love 232 The Confusion of the Mythic and the Magical 242 The Problem of Endings: Order and Return 246 Ch. 7 Epilogue: The Compass of Irony 257 Works Cited 269 Index 281