red and black bedroom decorated dream catcher

Cao was a member of a prominent Chinese family that had served the Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty but whose fortunes had begun to decline.

It is known with certainty that Cao Xueqin began writing Dream of the Red Chamber in the 1740s. History Textual history ĭream of the Red Chamber has a complicated textual history that scholars and historians have long debated. In the early 20th century, lexicographers used the text to establish the vocabulary of the new standardised language and reformers used the novel to promote the written vernacular. Cao Xueqin was well versed in Chinese poetry and in Classical Chinese, having written tracts in the semi- wenyan style, while the novel's dialogue is written in the Beijing Mandarin dialect, which was to become the basis of modern spoken Chinese. The novel is composed in written vernacular ( baihua) rather than Classical Chinese ( wenyan). ' Redology' is the field of study devoted to the novel. The title has also been translated as Red Chamber Dream and A Dream of Red Mansions. Their 120-chapter edition became the most widely circulated version. It is still debated whether Gao and Cheng composed these chapters themselves and the extent to which they did or did not represent Cao's intentions. It was not published until nearly three decades after Cao's death, when Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan ( 程偉元), edited the first and second printed editions under the title Dream of the Red Chamber in 1791–92, adding 40 chapters. Copies of his uncompleted manuscript circulated in Cao's social circle, under the title Story of a Stone, in slightly varying versions of eighty chapters. Ĭao apparently began composing it in the 1740s and worked on it until his death in 1763 or 1764. At a more profound level, the author explores religious and philosophical questions, and the writing style includes echoes of the plays and novels of the late Ming, as well as poetry from earlier periods.

Cao depicts the power of the father over the family, but the novel is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. The intricate strands of its plot depict the rise and decline of a family much like Cao's own and, by extension, of the dynasty itself.

One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, it is known for its psychological scope, and its observation of the worldview, aesthetics, lifestyles, and social relations of 18th-century China. ' Dream of the Red Chamber' in Traditional (top) and Simplified (bottom) Chinese charactersĭream of the Red Chamber ( Honglou Meng) or The Story of the Stone ( Shitou Ji) is a Chinese novel composed by Cao Xueqin in the mid-18th century.

Red and black bedroom decorated dream catcher