Enchantment and Disenchantment (eBook)

Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature

Wai-yee Li (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2014
308 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-6332-7 (ISBN)

Infos

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 editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover 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.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.7.2014
• Reihe/Serie: Princeton Legacy Library
• Reihe/Serie: Princeton Legacy Library
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Alazon • Allegory • Allusion • Ambiguity • Ambivalence • Apotheosis • At Best • authorship • awareness • Biography • Buddhahood • Buddhism • Buddhist cosmology • Bureau of Economic Analysis • Caricature • Censer • Chai (symbol) • chang'e • Chih • Chinese literature • Clothing • Confucianism • Consciousness • Consummation • courtesan • Criticism • Crushing (execution) • decipherment • deity • dichotomy • Disenchantment • Dream of the Red Chamber • Economy of the Soviet Union • Elegance • Elegiac couplet • Embroidery • Empathy • Emptiness • Enlightenment in Buddhism • Epigraphy • First appearance • fox spirit • Genre • Ghost Festival • Good and evil • Grief • Handbook • Hannah Arendt • Henry Peacham (born 1546) • Humour • Impossibility • intermediate state • Intertextuality • Irony • john minford • lapel • laughter • Literature • Louis Lambert (novel) • Measures of national income and output • Metaphor • originality • Otherworld • Pathos • Peony • perception • Poetry • Political organization • Precept • preface • Queen Mother of the West • raw material • Reality • Renunciation • Revolution • rhetoric • Romance Novel • self-pity • sensibility • Singing • Solipsism • Stupor • Subjective consciousness • Subjectivity • sword dance • Taoism • The City in the Sea • The Eye of the World • The Heathen • The Sense of an Ending • Thought • Truth prevails • Two Kinds • Tzvetan Todorov • Unemployment benefits • Verisimilitude • vocabulary • Water Margin • Western literature • Writing
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-6332-5 / 1400863325
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-6332-7 / 9781400863327