Unraveling Religious Ideology of Chinese Aristocracy in Imperial Qing from a Literary Perspective

Abstract

I unveil the aristocratic ethos regarding religion in imperial China under the reign of the Qing dynasty. Adopting a literary perspective, I deploy a hermeneutic methodology by means of scrutinizing the chef-d’oeuvre of a master writer Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber, which embroiders trials and tribulations of an enormous aristocratic clan that embodies every stratum of Qing society, especially the upper strata. Through critically analyzing the novel translated by David Hawkes, I investigate the comprehensive permeation of religious ideology within the moneyed family from the aspects of credos, practices and language. I explore theodiversity and polytheism epotimised by harmonious contemporaneous of (sub-)religions, and propound that such phenomena are owing to lack of an overwhelmingly predominant religion, which can be accounted for by external and internal factors—the former pertains to centralization of authority in feudal China and orthodox Confucian thinking that promulgates atheism and agnosticism as well as ancestor and Heaven worship, while the latter entails the liberalism, i.e. non-sanctimoniousness and non-expansionism of indigenous and Sinicised religions. I also propose the overarching rationale accounting for the contemporaneous of religious theologies among the aristocracy, viz., the practicality and pragmatism of the Chinese nation.

Keywords

Dream of the Red Chamber / literature / imperial Qing / religion / theodiversity and polytheism / practicality and pragmatism

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