文学相关外文翻译---由石头离开引发的开端论《红楼梦》的叙事结构的起源艺术-其他专业.doc

中文2250字 英文文献资料（要求达到2000字） Beginnings and Departures: ——the dream of the red chamber Yao Huashi （Wake Forest University） Abstract: Chapter One of the Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng)consists of a series of beginnings or “false starts” as one critic has characterized them. The first of three narrative episodes which make up the prologue casts the protagonist’s mythic origin in the primordial past. Key words: the beginning, innovation ,vestige of tradition A brief summary of the familiar story runs as follows. In order to repair a leaky sky, the goddess Nüwa moulds 36, 501 five-colored rocks. In the end she finds use for only 36,500 of them. Having become sentient and quasianthropomorphic, the supernumerary rock is despondent over his rejection. One day, while lamenting his misfortune, Stone sees a Buddhist monk and a Daoist prelate approaching and overhears them reminiscing about the prosperity of the sublunary world. Stone is sorely tempted to partake in the sensual pleasures that the two have described so vividly and begs them to help him descend to earth. Having unwittingly enticed Stone, the Buddhist and the Daoist now try to warn him of the transient and illusory nature of earthly pleasures. Their words, however, fall on deaf ears. Stone is determined to seek his fulfillment on earth. The subsequent narrative, or the novel proper, is thus literally consequent upon Stone’s fateful departure from the ethereal world. An immense time span separates the first episode from the next. Eons have passed before a Daoist named Vanitas chances upon Stone, who has since returned to the ethereal world. Or rather, the Daoist finds a rock bearing an inscription of Stone’s earthly sojourn; hence the original title of the novel, the Story of the Stone.5 After perusing it, the Daoist acknowledges to Stone, author of the inscribed tale, that it indeed has some interest, but he maintains that it is also seriously flawed. Despite his initial reservations, Vanitas agrees to tra