Dream of the Red Chamber and the Emergence and Evolution of Narrative Modernity in Chinese Literature

Abstract

Discussions on the inception of modernity have been ongoing since the last century, with some scholars attributing it to the late Qing or late Ming periods, and most still place it within the May Fourth Movement. Nevertheless, Dream of the Red Chamber already harbors factors of modernity’s inception and growth. Starting from the narratological perspective of Dream of the Red Chamber, this paper takes root in the cultural context of China’s native culture. It explores the book’s manifestation of the initial pattern of Chinese narrative modernity and its significance to the literary history of the late Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China and the later generations through its transcendence of Chinese classical novels when comparing its difference with western narratology. Through the dimensions of Layout of Discursive Traps, Motive Power Component, and The Aesthetic Construction of Time, borrowing from indigenous narrative theories of China, it is discovered that at the birth of Dream of the Red Chamber, China’s indigenous narrative modernity had already emerged and continued to evolve and spread, which merged with Western modernity during the late Qing period, constructing a fusion of Chinese and Western literary discourse fields.