When The Text Is As Interesting As The Book
It’s a little bit late in coming, but I finally finished up a quick overview of the history of the text of Dream of the Red Chamber:
This is what we’d normally call “higher criticism,” which refers to criticism that focuses on the text itself. “Lower criticism” is more like what you read on this blog every day - that involves reading the commonly accepted text and arguing incessantly about what it means.
Of course, the problem with Dream of the Red Chamber is that analysis of the text itself brings with it a lot of assumptions and complications, including some things that can be really difficult to understand.
The other problem is that it’s really not easy to find copies of all these various manuscript variants and the various versions that have been published over the years.
I have my ways, however, and have slowly been piecing together a pretty comprehensive collection of all of this stuff.
Soon - in fact, hopefully by the end of this week - I’ll have a major update to the files area of this site with a bunch of helpful files. These will include:
Published translations in multiple languages (basically as much as I can find)
All Chinese editions of the book I’ve been able to come across, including manuscripts and printed copies
Numerous commentary books and articles that have come up over the years
And more!
Of course, collecting all the books is one thing. Actually reading them is another. But we’ve got time on our hands. Stay tuned as I slowly start working through the world of commentaries.