“Reading Art in Literature: The Marvelous Case of ‘The Story of the Stone’”, a book by Dore J. Levy

Reading Art in Literature: The Marvelous Case of “The Story of the Stone” is a literary study of the art objects lavishly deployed by Cao Xueqin (1710–1765?) in his beloved novel (better known as The Dream of the Red Chamber). These objects are intended as expedients to preserving the vanishing culture of his lifetime, while offering their symbolic and allegorical significance as guides to a path of enlightenment.

In March of this year, Comparative Literature professor Dore Levy published her new book, Reading Art in Literature: The Marvelous Case of “The Story of the Stone”. The Story of the Stone (also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber) is an 18th-century Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin, and is considered to be one of the great classical novels of Chinese literature. Prof. Levy’s book is a literary study of the art objects in Cao Xueqin’s novel.

This study not only illuminates the meaning behind the variety, provenance, placement, and uses of these objects but also how the art objects in the novel function as a guide to the author’s fictional world. These include masterpieces of Chinese painting, treasures from the dowries of the women who married into the Jia family, mystical objects with the power to awaken minds set upon destructive paths, and Prospect Garden, a feat of garden engineering and design meant to honor the emperor’s favor but used to protect the children of the Jia Family from the vicissitudes of adult life beyond its walls.

Cambria Press

Dore Levy is Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of East Asian Studies here at Brown University. She came to Brown in 1981 as the first specialist in a non-western culture in Comparative Literature, and subsequently has taught a broad variety of courses in Asian Studies, with a focus on traditional Chinese culture. Dore’s previous publications include Chinese Narrative Poetry: the Late Han through T'ang Dynasties (Duke University Press) and Ideal and Actual in The Story of the Stone (Columbia University Press).

Join us in congratulating Dore on her publication!