An Analysis Of The Aesthetic Value Of Humor In A Dream Of Red Mansions

There are lots of humorous episodes in A Dream of Red Mansions.Responding to the scholarly consensus that it is essential to examine its text more closely,the present dissertation explores humorous aspects of A Dream of Red Mansions through narratology and aesthetics,hoping to facilitate our understanding of multiple artistic values and philosophical implications of this great Chinese novel.Meanwhile,on the occasion of the centenary of New Redology,the academic circle began to reflect on the limitations of the textual criticism advocated by Hu Shi.From perspective of humor,present dissertation takes seriously the fictionality of this masterwork.This paper takes all the humorous descriptions in A Dream of Red Mansions as the research object and makes a comprehensive study of them from various aspects.It tries to explore the aesthetic implication and intrinsic value of "carnival spirit","game purport","sadness and joy artistic conception",which was reflected behind humor.The first chapter focuses on festivals and feasts that "laughter to express emotion",it explains the carnival humor with "making fun" as the core from the perspectives of "space","rank" and "drunkenness",the humor in it expresses people’s opinion that freedom belongs to the essence of life and dispelling the inhibition of normal life with an extreme carnival spirit.In the constant examination of the relationship between self and others,people have re-realized the value of their own existence with non-hierarchical consciousness.The second chapter mainly focuses on the game space of "Joke with each other".It explains the play-style humor with "leisure fun" as the result of the differences of "men’s space","women’s space" and "men and women co-existence space",and also the humor mediates the "same but different" and "different but same" atmosphere of the game space caused by the "difference in rank" and the "opposition of elegance and vulgality" with the moderating effect of laughter,where people’s humor appear as a purport to make public the will of personality and to express their own true interest.The third chapter mainly focuses on the aesthetic pursuit of "happiness begets sorrow".It mainly explains the role of humor in the construction of the artistic value of the integration of tragedy and comedy from the perspectives of "making fun of death","comic writing to describe ghosts","harmonic hidden sorrow" and "joyful words to hide sadness in the future",the humor in it expresses the spiritual voice of people in trouble,and through the narrative technique of "comedy" to express "tragedy",the author completed the cryptic writing of individual fate and the rise and fall of the family.An exploration of the aesthetic implications of humor in a Dream of Red Mansions reveals that humor is not only a figure of speech,but also an attitude towards life endowed with a philosophical spirit of broadness and optimism.The humorous aesthetic feature of a Dream of Red Mansions is not only a narrative technique of the tragic fate inexpressible by comedic discourse,but also a carrier of philosophical spirit expressed by humor,which hides the aesthetic ideology and value orientation pursued by the author consciously.