#ReadingTheStone
Welcome to our NotAPodcast NotAClass Saturday chats on #ReadingTheStone - an experiment in collectively reading the 18th century Chinese masterwork Story of the Stone, aka Dream of The Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (Hongloumeng). Episodes are unedited and recorded live on TwitterSpaces or Zoom - follow Twitter account @ReadingTheStone or hashtag #ReadingTheStone to participate. To listen in chronological order, please take note of 'season' and 'episode' number. Additional materials housed at readingthestone.com. With Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, Wai-Yee Li, Ann Waltner, and friends.
#ReadingTheStone
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 5: On Love and Death in the House of Jia
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ReadingTheStone
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Season 2
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Episode 5
[Originally recorded on 2-11-2023]
The theme of this morning's #ReadingTheStone live chat began earlier, with Kate's Twitter poll on where readers fell on The Baoyu-Daiyu-Baochai ship, and whether Daiyu's quiet off-stage demise in the midst of a wedding was unbefitting the exit of a central character. Some other forked paths of conversation centered around Chapters 96-100 of Hongloumeng: Daiyu's final utterance, the business of Baoyu's lost jade, idealized polygamy, destroying traces of oneself as gesture of moral purity or willful self-destruction, bowderlizing sad endings to please one's audience, and of course, muzak.
Thanks for listening! Find us at readingthestone.com or @ReadingTheStone on Twitter.