Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Ch. 1 The Genealogy of Disenchantment 3
Fu Rhetoric and the Fictional Imagination 10
Fu Rhetoric and the Feminine Principle 17
The Topos of the Ambiguous Divine Woman 23
The Inward Turn of the Topos of the Ambiguous Divine Woman 33
The Progeny of the Ambiguous Divine Woman 41
Ch. 2 The Late-Ming Moment 47
Comic Reconciliation in The Peony Pavilion 50
Detachment through Attachment in The Story of Nan-ko 64
The Ironic Vision of The Story of Han-tan 69
The Lyrical Solution in The Palace of Everlasting Life 77
The Philosophical Solution in Peach Blossom Fan 81
Enchantment, Disenchantment, and Self-Representation 83
Ch. 3 Desire and Order in Liao-chai chih-i 89
The Confucian Solution to the Problem of Sensual Love 89
Pu Sung-ling and the Taming of the Strange 92
Metamorphosis and Desire 100
Desire and the Order of Formal Symmetry 105
Desire and the Logic of Ironic Inversion 114
The Internal Balance of Desire: Mediation and Complementary Heroines 122
The Structures of Order 136
Ch. 4 Beginnings: Enchantment and Irony in Hung-lou meng 152
The Rhetoric of Illusion and the Difficulty of Beginning 159
Flaw and Supplement 163
Problems in Literary Communication 175
The Fate of a Rhetorical Figure 179
From Myth to History 185
The Illusory Realm of Great Void 190
Ch. 5 Self-Reflexivity and the Lyrical Ideal in Hung-lou meng 202
Lust of the Mind 203
Stone as Narrator 210
Enlightenment through Love 216
Ch. 6 Disenchantment and Order in Hung-lou meng 231
The World of the Precious Mirror of Love 232
The Confusion of the Mythic and the Magical 242
The Problem of Endings: Order and Return 246
Ch. 7 Epilogue: The Compass of Irony 257
Works Cited 269
Index 281

In a famous episode of the eighteenth-century masterpiece The Dream of the Red Chamber, the goddess Disenchantment introduces the hero, Pao-yü, to the splendors and dangers of the Illusory Realm of Great Void. The goddess, one of the divine women in Chinese literature who inspire contradictory impulses of attachment and detachment, tells Pao-yü that the purpose of his dream visit is "disenchantment through enchantment," or "enlightenment through love." Examining a range of genres from different periods, Wai-yee Li reveals the persistence of the dialectic embodied by the goddess: while illusion originates in love and desire, it is only through love and desire that illusion can be transcended.
Li begins by defining the context of these issues through the study of an entire poetic tradition, placing special emphasis on the role of language and of the feminine element. Then, focusing on the "dream plays" by T'ang Hsien-tsu, she turns to the late Ming, an age which discovers radical subjectivity, and goes on to explore a seventeenth-century collection of classical tales, Records of the Strange from the Liao-chai Studio by P'u Sung-ling. The latter half of the book is devoted to a thorough analysis of The Dream of the Red Chamber, the most profound treatment of the dialectic of enchantment and disenchantment, love and enlightenment, illusion and reality.
Originally published in 1993.
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