This dissertation is a study of a subgenre in the traditional Chinese novel, the fiction of enlightenment, as represented by the 16th century Journey to the West, the 17th century Tower of Myriad Mirrors , and the 18th century Dream of the Red Chamber. This is a study in the context of the generally neglected Ming-Qing Buddhism. My argument is that these authors have translated the Buddhist soteriological models—which are to a great extent epistemological in nature—into narrative forms and structures. In these works, the plot, the way inner conflicts are resolved, and the mode of expression are determined by the underlying quest for enlightenment, the centrality of Buddhist salvation. The plots form a neat parallel with the patterns in certain well-known Mahayana sutras. The narrative techniques, in particular the use of doubling and mirroring—self-reflexive—devices and the dependence on the oneiric experiences, derive from Buddhist cosmology, psychology, and its assumptions about the reality. These fictional works, besides responding to Buddhist sutras, also configure and constellate among themselves, and weave an intertextual web, all contributing in their different ways to the fiction of enlightenment.; The thesis falls into five chapters. Chapter One is a generic introduction: it contextualizes the works in the milieu of Ming-Qing Buddhism and, from a comparative perspective, defines the term, the “fiction of enlightenment.” Chapter Two discusses the Buddhist soteriological patterns and their bearings on the narrative structures of Chinese drama and fiction. The model is first established by the founder of the religion and reenacted in the sutras. However, another pattern develops, which is a significant variation from Buddha's model, a variation which appears like a subversion of the Buddhist quest, namely an embrace of the phenomenal as a result of the Mahayana understanding of the intrinsic relationship between samsara and nirvana. These two patterns inform the fictional works discussed. Chapter Three concentrates on Journey to the West, in particular the journey structure which owes much to the Gandavyuha, the last book of Avatamsaka Sutra. Chapter Four serves as an interlude, reading Tower of Myriad Mirrors as a link between two longer works. Chapter Five discusses Dream of the Red Chamber, which is based on the paradoxes of illusion and reality, desire and its transcendence. As Journey parallels the Avatamsaka Sutra antithetically, as was suggested by the Qing critic You Tong, so Dream also parallels Journey antithetically, with Tower serving as an intermediary.
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