Honglou meng, The Story of the Western Wing, Chinese Theatre, Qing, Yuan
Abstract
The 18th-century novel The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng) is one of the most important narrative masterpieces of Chinese literature. Despite the numerous studies on this work − that is an encyclopedic summa of an entire culture − the role of the theatre in the novel has not been sufficiently deepened. This paper explores how the young protagonists of Honglou meng use The Story of the Western Wing, a comedy that is still fundamental to the Chinese artistic heritage today. The two teenagers in the novel secretly admire the drama characters and their courageous way of living passions. These characters have the subversive and maieutic function of providing essential words for a dialogue that allows the adolescents to emotionally overcome the conditioning of an environment characterized by a rigid and oppressive Neo-Confucian education. Some issues about the consideration suffered by sentimental dramaturgy − in an imperial context where the theatre was the centre of debates on which themes and behaviours should be censored as corrupting costumes − emerge in the background of this analysis.
