Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Self, Sexuality, and Writing in Honglou meng

1995; Harvard–Yenching Institute; Volume: 55; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2719347

1944-6454

Angelina C.C. Yee,

Japanese History and Culture

THE success of Honglou meng in portraying a galaxy of characters, in depicting a panorama of aristocratic life, and in interweaving a wealth of puns, riddles, conundrums, and poems into the prose narrative accounts in part for the reasons why the early readers, accustomed to a political culture of literary persecution and textual resistance, tended to interpret the novel as a roman 'a clef. With the discovery of various manuscripts laden with annotations and comments by a group of readers who seemed to know Cao Xueqin and his creative intentions intimately, their effusions fueled speculation on the relationship between the author's life, of which little is known, and the events depicted in the novel.' A whole industry sprang up in pursuit of Cao's life and lineage, but efforts to identify specific characters in the novel with members of his clan have remained largely disappointing.2