Author ｜
Hsuan-chang Huang
Abstract ｜
This paper revisits the conceptual core of Yu Li’s “aesthetics of multiple transpositions” (duoyong duoyin多重渡引), focusing on her engagement with Dream of the Red Chamber in Gathering Flowers into Dreams: Yu Li Reads the Red Chamber. It examines how Li synthesizes art-historical materials with close textual analysis, employing “multiple transpositions” as a restorative method to construct a reading practice that transcends temporal, medial, and perceptual boundaries. I argue that Li’s attention to characters’ trajectories from daily life to the “legendary” not only reveals a narrative strategy but also extends into a thematic reorientation she terms “adult transposition” — framing the novel as a dual exploration of lived experience and lyrical consciousness. The study first traces Li’s interpretive trajectory from her formative academic years to Gathering Flowers into Dreams, highlighting how her early impressions have evolved into a systematic framework centered on “multiple transpositions.” Next, through the lens of transposition, it analyzes her readings of characterization and plot to demonstrate how she engages with the novel’s intricate emotional architecture and Bildungsroman dynamics. Finally, it investigates the Qing dynasty illustrations and art-historical sources compiled in Gathering Flowers into Dreams, proposing that these visual materials constitute an alternative hermeneutic mode—one that materializes her reading practice while deepening her multilayered meditation on the novel’s affective essence.
keywords ｜
Yu Li, multiple transpositions, the lyric, Dream of the Red Chamber, reception history