Wasted Innocence
Children and Childhood in Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21791159 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xiaofei Shi (0000-0002-5001-5812), Labao Wang |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 199-212 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Research in Children s Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1755-6198 • E-ISSN: 1755-6201 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/ircl.2021.0397 |
| OpenAlex | W3160997293 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber is a classic Chinese novel dating back to 1792. This article investigates the formative experiences of the representative children from the book's four distinguished households against the unique historical and sociocultural context of premodern Chinese Confucian adulthood with all its rules for rigid regulatory order. We argue that a gap needs to be filled in the understanding of the premodern conceptions of children and childhood in Chinese literature through a detailed case study of Dream. Moreover, the novel's representation of childhood innocence as a form of resistance that draws its force from a dialectic of nature and culture provides an important alternative perspective on the Western Romantic conception. While the book is universally acknowledged as the pinnacle of traditional Chinese fiction, it should also be fully recognised as one of the most important precursors to modern and contemporary Chinese children's literature
Aesthetics · Art · Children's literature · Dialectic · Dream · Epistemology · Innocence · Literature · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Sociology · Visual arts · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Philosophy · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis
| Highly cited | No |
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