All the knowledge about a dream of red mansions

A Brief Introduction to A Dream of Red Mansions

A Dream of Red Mansions shows a broad vision of social life by describing the ups and downs of Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue, which contains rich and colorful secular human feelings. It is said that A Dream of Red Mansions contains the historical capacity of an era and is an encyclopedia of the end of feudalism.

The book is novel in structure and ingenious in conception. At the beginning, five retrospectives are used to cover up the essence of the content, fairy tales and fake village dialect are used to put the work in a confusing fog, and the concepts of "truth" and "falsehood" are used to excuse the world of "dreams" and "illusions", so that the whole novel develops according to this structure and finally creates a "life" in A Dream of Red Mansions, except for the famous twelve women in Jinling. These numerous figures, such as "crucian carp crossing the river", are numerous and varied, with distinctive personalities and no repetition, including all kinds of human figures in the world. Even in the shaping of the same person, there are thousands of faces of one person, which is amazing.

Because of the huge content of A Dream of Red Mansions, different people give it different themes. In a word, different people have different opinions. As Lu Xun said: "It's just that fate depends on the reader's eyes. Scholars see yi, Tao sees lewdness, talents see lingering, revolutionaries see Paiman, gossip sees Baoyu's secret in my eyes, but I see many deaths. " As Wang Meng said: "It is a universe and a world of its own, which is rich and complex.

A Brief Introduction to A Dream of Red Mansions

A Dream of Red Mansions is a classic with the highest literary achievements in China. It is the pinnacle of China's classical literature creation and the cultural treasure of all mankind.

A Dream of Red Mansions was first published as a manuscript during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. At present, the earliest manuscript we found is the reign of Qianlong and Xujia (1754), but there are only sixteen discontinuous chapters. Later, several manuscripts were discovered, such as the year of Qianlong Chen Geng (1765438+). According to textual research, the author of this novel is Cao Xueqin, who was born at the end of Kangxi or the beginning of Yongzheng and died at 1763 or 1764. So far, people have not formed a unified view on his life experience, but it is an indisputable fact that he failed to finish the novel because of poverty and illness and the death of his beloved son. The first 80 times handed down now are basically him. Thirty years after his death, 120 copies of A Dream of Red Mansions were printed with wooden movable type, and 179 1 and 1792 were printed twice, which was very popular since then. However, according to expert research, the last forty chapters of this popular book are the sequels of a bureaucrat named Gao E. Although his sequels give a complete scale to the story, characters generally have endings, but his own ideological realm and artistic accomplishment are far less than Cao Xueqin's, so his sequels are not in line with Cao Xueqin's original intention. According to Cao Xueqin's conception, Jia Fu will eventually be destroyed as a forest bird, leaving a piece of white truth, while Gao E wrote Baoyu as "the king of Middle-earth" and Jia Fu as "Huang Muen" and "Yan Shize". Therefore, Gao E's last forty chapters are a great failure. However, this practice of 120 times has become a custom for 200 years, and the tragic ending of Baodai written by Gao E has also been accepted by readers. Therefore, when people talk about A Dream of Red Mansions, they often refer to the first eighty chapters of Cao Xueqin and the last forty chapters of Gao E. This book with a cycle of 120 has a total word count of about 1075000.

When Cao Xueqin wrote this book, he used the technique of "homophonic implication". He named the four Jia sisters "Ying Chun" and "Chun", which are homophonic "Yuan Tan". When Jia Baoyu wandered in the dreamland, the police fairy called him the tea "Thousand Red Cave", which is the homonym of "Thousand Red Crys", and also told him to drink the wine of "Wan Yan's Same Cup", which is the homonym of "Wan Yan shares the same sorrow". This technique almost runs through the book, and readers should savor it slowly.

A Brief Introduction to the Version of A Dream of Red Mansions

So far, 12 lipoids have been found. Among them, the most important ones are as follows:

1. Jia Shuben: Also known as a book, Sixteen Records of Hongyan Zhai reevaluates the stones collected by Liu Quanfu in Daxing, the former Tongzhi Dynasty. Save one to eight, thirteen to sixteen, twenty-five to twenty-eight. The original edition of this book was "re-evaluated by copying" made by Zhi Yanzhai in the 19th year of Qianlong (1754). As far as manuscripts are concerned, Jia Shuben is the earliest and most reliable manuscript.

2. Finished version: also known as Zhiyi version. That is, Prince Qingyi's manuscript "Re-evaluation of the Stone by Zhi Yanzhai". The original deposit is thirty-eight times, that is, one to twenty, thirty-one to forty and sixty-one to seventy times (sixty-four, sixty-seven times missing). Later, it was discovered three times and two and a half times, the second half of 55, 56, 57 and 58 and the first half of 59, and * * * saved 41 times and two and a half times. According to the research of Redology, this manuscript belongs to the second generation Prince Xiao.

Geng: Also known as Zhi Jing Ben, there are 78 copies of Zhi Yanzhai's Re-evaluation of Peking University's Hidden Stones. Originally 80 times, 6467 times less. 1955 Two documents lost during photocopying have been supplemented in the first edition. However, these two eras in the final edition have also been copied down by later generations according to the systematic version of elevation. 1974 When People's Literature Publishing House reprinted it, both of them were supplemented in Mongolian. Geng Chenben was in Qianlong for twenty-five years (1760), when Cao Xueqin was still there. This book is based on the edited version, and the reply, text and comments retain the traces of many authors and commentators' self-help versions.

4. Dream manuscript: also known as Fat manuscript, discovered in the spring of 1959, and later collected by the Institute of Literature of China Academy of Sciences, and photocopied and published by Zhonghua Book Company, referred to as Dream of Red Mansions. This manuscript generally belongs to the system of basic version and Chen Geng version. The important value of this book is that the original version is a rather early fat book, and many different languages can correct the mistakes of this book or provide new research clues.

5. Qi deficiency: also called Qi deficiency or Qi deficiency. An over-recorded copy was originally collected by Qi in Deqing during Qianlong's reign, and was opened in Guangxu's reign, and then returned to Di Baoxian, the boss of Shanghai Bookstore, for photo lithography. 1973, the people's literature publishing house changed the title of the preface to the stone when it was photocopied and published according to the original lithograph. This book is neat, clear and orderly, easy to read, and it is a circulating version of a relatively complete lipid evaluation system. There may be more than one copy, so the incomplete parts of the other copies have been filled in. I also collected a lot of comments, many of which were missing.

6. Chen Jia Ben: Also known as Fat Dream Ben, or Fat Gold Ben. That is, in 1953, the master's preface to a dream of red mansions was found in Shanxi Province for forty-nine years (1784), and it was collected in Beijing Library. This edition is close to Jia Shuben, but the characters have been greatly revised, and a large number of different characters have appeared, some of which are the same as Cheng Jiaben. Whether this manuscript is inherited by elevation or compiled by elevation remains to be verified. Nineteen times ago, the general comment said: "There are too many original notes, which interfere with the text. Delete it now, let the audience calm down and show the author's ingenuity. " In this way, the fat batch based on the book was deleted in large quantities.

7. Scripture collection: also known as Confucian classics or Confucian classics. That is 1959, the manuscript of The Story of the Stone was found in Nanjing, which was collected by the Jingshi family in Yangzhou during the Qianlong period. 1964 It was still there. After a few years, I lost my way. At the beginning of the book's discovery, Mao and Qiben collated the book and extracted the notes 150 that Qiben did not have. Later, it was published in the August and September issue of the cultural and educational materials newspaper of Nanjing Normal University, and an introduction was written. This edition preserves many Zhu Mo batches that are not found in other editions, some of which are of great value to Cao Xueqin's creative thoughts.

8. Collection Edition: Also known as Ziyaben, it is the manuscript "The Story of the Stone" collected by Leningrad Branch of the Asian People's Institute of the Soviet Union. There are seventy-eight deposits, and the fifth and sixth are missing. This book is 1 1 1, with 8 folders1and 88 articles in double rows. According to reports, there are nearly 200 eyebrow clips here, none of which are the same as others. But the double-line batch is almost the same as Geng. This book is later than Basic Book and Chen Geng Book, and earlier than other books that have been sorted back. This is a very valuable early edition of Stone, as complete and credible as Chen Geng's.

The above is a brief introduction to the eight kinds of fat critical manuscripts of Stone. The material is taken from Cai Yijiang's Comments on Poems and Songs of A Dream of Red Mansions, Unity Press, 199 1.