Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber

Fictions of Enlightenment book cover

Qiancheng Li. Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber. University of Hawaii Press, 2003.

Fictions of Enlightenment is the first book to examine the fascinating and intricate relationship between Buddhism and the development of Chinese vernacular fiction. Qiancheng Li brings Buddhist models to bear on the vision, structure, and narrative form of three classics of late imperial literature--Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber--arguing that by fashioning their plots after the narratives of certain Mahayana sutras, the novelists transformed Buddhist concepts into narrative structures.