문화현상으로 바라본 淸代의 《紅樓夢》 열풍

A Study on the Cultural Phenomenon of Hong-lou-meng(紅樓夢) Popularity in Qing Dynasty

Until quite recently, the study on Hong-lou-meng has been mainly done by some official critics and a few commentators, and the reader’s response has been rarely highlighted in the meanwhile. However, considering that the novel made a great impact on the reader in general, it is worthwhile to analyse its meaning, seeing its peculiar reception as a cultural phenomenon. Based upon some of the records which indicated the reader’s response, this study is trying to elucidate the true meaning of such a great response and to find out the reason why it was so. The original 80 series Hong-lou-meng was of an unfinished hand-written manuscript, so that the general reader’s accessibility was very limited. However, the appearance of 120 series printed form made the reader’s accessibility quite facile. The wide spectrum of readers also made possible the appearance of diverse responses. In the meanwhile, one of interesting cultural phenomena was that some young readers identified him or herself as one of the main characters of the novel, sometimes even to the point of killing him of herself. That might be called a special cultural phenomenon of idolization and obsession. The reader is inclined to prefer a certain aspect of novel, be it character, structure, story line, setting, or theme. In the case of Hong-lou-meng, what made the reader possessed with it was not its supposed philosophical messages but was some emotional elements represented by love and its tragic aftermath as well as by detailed descriptions of human psychology. The reader whose sentiments were inclined to take the novel as a spiritual freedom road or a pathway to substitute satisfaction projected into it the value of mutual human affection and the desire for the authenticity of love. It is a real pity that the official critics didn’t come up with the undercurrents of such popular emotions. For them, the text was merely used as a means of stressing upon the significance of social and personal morality. The situation would have been much different if the men of letters in those days had obtained a keen eye on the cultural tendency and a more flexible attitude toward the narrative literature. Seeing from this perspective, the the phenomenon of Hong-lou-meng popularity should not be regarded as a social syndrome made by a certain novel but, rather, as a watershed event that made us to see the social problems of Qing Dynasty from a different lens.