Novel
Dream of the Red Chamber
紅樓夢
Cao Xueqin · 1750
Synopsis
The story opens with a stone abandoned by the goddess Nüwa, which takes human form as Jia Baoyu, son of Jia Zheng, born with a piece of jade. The novel follows the Jia clan, whose two branches, Rongguo and Ningguo, live in Beijing in their mansions, and whose fortune grows when a daughter of the house becomes an imperial concubine. Baoyu loves his cousins Lin Daiyu, frail and sickly, and Xue Baochai, sturdier and more sensible; a dream shows him his loves as an illusion.
Context
The novel first circulated in manuscript copies in Beijing; the earliest bear comments in red ink by a reader signing Zhiyanzhai, perhaps a relative of the author. Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan published in 1791 the first movable-type edition, completed to one hundred and twenty chapters, then a revised version in 1792; most scholars attribute the last forty chapters to another hand. The fall of the Jia family reflects that of the author's own family, according to the University of Texas. Li Tche-houa and Jacqueline Alézaïs translated it into French in 1981, David Hawkes and John Minford into English from 1973 to 1980.
Who it is for
An immense novel with hundreds of characters; it exists in French in a complete translation in two volumes.
Prizes and reception
A scholarly discipline, Redology, studies its manuscripts, their variants and the attribution of its last chapters.
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