Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature

by Wai-Yee Li

Book Overview

In a famous episode of the eighteenth-century masterpiece The Dream of the Red Chamber, the goddess Disenchantment introduces the hero, Pao-y?, to the splendors and dangers of the Illusory Realm of Great Void. The goddess, one of the divine women in Chinese literature who inspire contradictory impulses of attachment and detachment, tells Pao-y? that the purpose of his dream visit is "disenchantment through enchantment," or "enlightenment...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 069160360X
• ISBN13: 9780691603605
• Release Date: July 2014
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"