“Spring Dreams Disappear with Clouds, Flying Flowers Chase after Water.”
——A Comparative Study of Miao Yu and Xi Chun under the Psychological Mechanism of “Obsession”
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_59How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- “Obsession” psychological mechanism; “A Dream of Red Mansions”; Miao Yu; Xi Chun
- Abstract
As the peak of Chinese classical novels, “A Dream of Red Mansions” has attracted the attention of scholars all over the world for its literary and artistic value. In the history of Chinese literature in the tradition of historical Chronicles, “A Dream of Red Mansions”, with its highly romantic fictional style, Outlines the complete picture of Qing Dynasty society. “A Dream of Red Mansions” is ended with the word “dream”, writing the human feelings, combining the virtual and real, depicting thousands of faces, and weaving a dream for almost thousands of people. In my understanding, the word “dream” represents the process of their acquisition and disillusionment. Most notably, there is a pair of characters with great similarity in the book – Miao Yu and Xi Chun, which triggered my thinking. Both of them are isomorphic in their Buddhism-related destiny and their obsession for “purity of the mind.” As shown in the fifth chapter “Wonderful Magic Fairy Singing”: “Spring dreams disappear with clouds, flying flowers chase after water”, the fate of Miao Yu and Xi Chun is portrayed as the image of “spring dreams” and “flying flowers”, the two have extremely difficult to distinguish the similar fate, but in fact there are very subtle differences, this difference directly presents the difference in the psychological attachment mechanism of the two people. However, under the writing principle of “No useless depictions in the Red Mansions”, the writer Cao Xueqin will not write the same characters, so there must be some differences between them, which are clearly reflected in the generation and driving process of their obsession psychological mechanism, and also affect their fate. The relevant theories of psychology can provide direct and in-depth research methods for the study of the similarities and differences between Miao Yu and Xi Chun. At the present stage, there are few comparative studies on Miao Yu and Xi Chun in the academic circle, and it is even more blank to explore the mechanism of their obsession from the perspective of psychology. Therefore, through the integration of literature and psychology disciplines, this study can promote the study of “A Dream of Red Mansions” in more dimensions and deepen the connection between psychology and Chinese classical literature.
- Copyright
- © 2025 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Sixie Li PY - 2025 DA - 2025/03/28 TI - “Spring Dreams Disappear with Clouds, Flying Flowers Chase after Water.” BT - Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Social Sciences and Educational Development (ICOSSED 2024) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 605 EP - 615 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_59 DO - 10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_59 ID - Li2025 ER -