Session 14: Discussion of assigned Chinese premodern texts, third of three sessions

Topics for this session

❖ Chinese premodern texts: Story of the Stone, second of three sessions
❖ Qing 情 (new definitions, compared to Japanese nasake 情)
❖ Story of the Stone in various film versions
❖ Story lines review

Thoughts*

Qing is a key term for us. The main points of this session:

• Qing (nasake in Japanese) is preeminently important to The Tale of Genji and many other premodern Japanese texts and remains important today
• Qing is a broad, flexible term and means different things in different contexts in Chinese literature
• Qing in Story of the Stone is, crudely speaking, of two varieties: "hard" qing (more along the lines of lust) and "soft" qing (represented by Baoyu's attitude. However, do not over-simplify this! It isn't quite that simple. Refer to the lecture content.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Optional reading: Selections from Love and Emotions in Traditional Chinese Literature, edited by Halvor Eifring (Brill, 2004). [bSpace > PDFs]

Texts, multimedia notes, links*

I have on bSpace a PPT that I use sometimes in class to "talk through" the first 26 chapters of Story of the Stone. You might find it useful as a way of reviewing or sorting out story lines. See Story of Stone review slides [bSpace, PPT]

The three film versions of Story of the Stone shown in class to highlight the important of how something is told (style as message or part of the message of romance):

• "Dream of the Red Chamber" (Bu Wancang, 1944) imdb
• "Dream of the Red Chamber" (Shaw Brothers, 1977) imdb
• 2009 Chinese TV drama version (Shaohong Li)

Other*

nothing yet ...

*THOUGHTS: Reading before class probably helps follow session content, reading afterwards might help consolidate notes, revisiting for tests is recommended. Content might be added before class or anytime up until about 24 hours ahead of a midterm.

*TEXTS, MULTIMEDIA NOTES, LINKS: If I have read from something, shown something or presented audio that is not elsewhere mentioned, I usually include that information here for the curious, sometime after the class (since I often make last-minute decisions about including something). It might take a while and sometimes I forget. You can email me.

*OTHER: When possible I note here names, places, and other details that I have mentioned in a lecture that would otherwise not be accessible in the assigned materials or easily located on your own. As with "TEXTS ..." this is usually sometime after class and, again, I might not be able to get around to doing it.