Hong Lou Meng acts as a medical casebook. In some ways, it reflects influence of the new genre of medical writing, incorporating humanistic descriptions of the physical experience of disease, details of the doctor-patient encounter, and accounts of chronic and congen ital illness. In other ways, it presents the reader with selected accounts of patients categorized by symptom set, and positing patients as members of a tradition of illness, while also tacitly creating that tradition. Hong Lou Meng also seems to work in tandem with medical history casebooks to create a particular kind of medical knowledge through the use of narrative. An instance of this production is the gendering of certain illnesses, such as Daiyu’s consumptive manifestation of liver yin deficiency as something that primarily affects women. This study focuses attention not just on one aspect of the “encyclopedic” nature of Hong Lou Meng, on its incorporation of contemporary texts, beliefs and quotidian knowledge, but focuses on the way that the novel acts as an encyclopedia and can be used as such to diagnose character types based on symptom sets, and illnesses based on character traits.

English critical writing on the Dream of the Red Chamber has proliferated in the last 40 years, forming a corpus of writings remarkable for its variety, scholarship and theoretical understanding. Taking the position of “Odd Tablet” (Jihu), the author focuses on recent writings and their multiple readings of the Dream, including eccentric pieces and works which revolve around critical and theoretical clusters—the authorship and integrity of the last forty chapters, sexuality and gender, the theme of incest, qing (desire) and the psychology of love, Ming and Qing historical and cultural contexts, and myth, Buddhist vision, and poetics.

This English bibliography is largely based on sources found in the Modern Language Association Bibliography International, Academic Search Premier, JSTOR (JournalSTORage), and Google, as well a§ research conducted in China at Beijing Language and Culture University, Tsinghua University, Beijing University, and the National Library of China. If readers have any further titles or comments to add, please contact the writer at: redmansion2002@yahoo.com. The compiler would like to thank Professor Mark Ferrara for his generous assistance and Professor Lucien Miller for his helpful corrections.