• ISSN: 2382-6282 (Print); 2972-3108 (Online)
    • Abbreviated Title: Int. J. Lang. Lit. Linguist.
    • Frequency: Bimonthly
    • DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL
    • Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Jason Miin-Hwa Lim
    • Managing Editor:  Jennifer X. Zeng
    • Indexed by:   CNKI, Google Scholar, Crossref,
    • E-mail: ijlll_Editor@126.com
IJLLL 2022 Vol.8(3): 174-177 ISSN: 2382-6282
DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL.2022.8.3.343

On the Mythological Prototype of Bird in a Dream of Red Mansions

Borui Liu

Abstract—At present, there are abundant researches and writings on a Dream of Red Mansions. It is also common to study the mythological structure in it. However, the imagists pay little attention to the “bird”, which is rich in connotation, and there are few works to explain it from the perspective of archetypal criticism. This paper aims to enrich the mythological structure of A Dream of Red Mansions, using archetypal criticism and mythological criticism methods, to study the formation mechanism of the god bird worship in ancient China and its influence on the collective unconsciousness of Cao Xueqin, author of A Dream of Red Mansions, and through analyzing characters such as Hsi-feng, Pao-yu, Tai-yu, and Lady Dowager, this paper confirms the existence of the god-bird worship psychology, which believes that a large number of bird images in A Dream of Red Mansions are rooted in the consciousness of Chinese ancestors, and they have unique connotations at the same time.

Index Terms—A Dream of Red Mansions, birds’ image, mythology, archetypal criticism.

Borui Liu is with the Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, 100000 China (e-mail: 1945260902@qq.com).

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Cite:Borui Liu, "On the Mythological Prototype of Bird in a Dream of Red Mansions," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 174-177, 2022.

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