Love in classical Chinese literature: Cathayan passions vs. Confucian ethics

The dissertation investigates the self-deconstruction of classical Chinese love narratives with a methodological combination of deconstruction and New Historicism.; "Love," within the boundaries of this critical enterprise, signifies pre-nuptial passion for union between man and woman in the circumstances of their own choosing. In traditional Chinese society, such a discourse of romantic love was marginal in opposition to the dominant Confucian discourse of arranged marriage. This led to an antagonistic formation of love narratives. Representation of love was made possible not only by the marginal discourse through subversion--strategies of putting up resistance to the status quo, but also by the dominant discourse through containment--strategies of appropriating the subversive pressure. Chapters two to five are devoted to textual analysis. The critical focus falls on the mutation of subversion/containment strategies in "The Story of Yingying," on the generic convention of compounding yanfen (love story) motif and lingguai (ghost story) motif in "Artisan Cui and Hist Ghost Wife," on a unique " dialogic parody" out of the author's dual allegiance to qing (love) and to li (anti-love) in The Peony Pavilion, and on the "mirage" of Confucian courtship in The Fortunate Union. The "conclusion" sums up from a diachronic perspective as well as a synchronic perspective. It proposes a continuity of self-deconstruction throughout the long history of classical Chinese love narratives. To further support such a proposition, a comparative study is made of The Story of the Stone and Wuthering Heights in the epilogue.; It is a complex project that may contribute to a new understanding of classical Chinese literature, and to a dialectical insight into the relationship between ideology and literature.