"a Dream Of Red Mansions" Forty And Eighty Repeat Its Significance

In literary and artistic creation, repetition and imitation should be avoided as taboos. That is why some critics have been reproaching Gao E for imitating the first 80 chapters of A Dream of Red Man- sions in writing the last 40 chapters of the same novel. But this article holds that the soealled ameness of the last 40 chapters with the first 80 onces exists only in the outward form of the stories, rather than in essence. This kind of sameness of stories can often best reveal the essential development laws of plots and embody the theme of a literary work. In fact,it is this sameness that results in the multi-col- orful and multi-variant artistic style of A Dream of Red Mansions, thus combining the last 40 chapters, the sequel of the novel written by Gao E ,with the first 80 ones as a harmonious organism. The ma- jor problem this article tries to solve is how to get off the wrong path misguided by some critics and appraise the last 40 chapters of A Dream of Red Mansions in a correct and all-round view.