Many scholarly works have focused on The Story of the Stone (also known as Dream of the Red Chamber), yet not enough has been said to date about the novel's interactions with the literary conventions to which it responds. In her important addition to Hongxue (Redology), I-Hsien Wu guides us to and through various literary sources, illuminating The Stone’s creation process and possibilities of interpretation. Unlike scholars who analyze the novel through the lens of its autobiographical implications or understand it as an individual work to be attributed to the talent of its historical authors—Cao Xueqin (1715–63) and Gao E (1738–1815), Wu considers the story an open structure that assimilates and transforms preexisting motifs in order to form its own identity. Seen in this light, The Stone is nothing but a “redistributed signifying system” (p. xiii) that transposes ideas, words, and character types from previous literary sources.
Eroticism...
