关键词: 神话, 意象, 修辞, 叙事

Abstract: The image of “deserted stone”, as well as the legend of Nuwa, is a major way of representation of narrative rhetoric in A Dream of Red Mansions. The paper explores, from a sense of narrative as represented by W. C. Booth and J. Phelan, the ethic significance of the prelude to the work, which is narrated by fourfold narrators and dual distance controls. Four narrators are the author, the commentator, the stone as homodiegetic narrator, and the third person as heterodiegetic narrator and the distance controls are that of emotion and that of aestheticism. It is held by the paper that the morality and ethics in the prelude to the work is broadly suggested in both the intellectual tradition of the “deserted stone” and the detached attitude of Buddhism. This pattern of prelude not only remains the traditional narrative of Nuwa legend, but also indicates an implicit communication between the author and the reader in terms of value and ideology conveyed in the image of “deserted stone”.

Key words: legend, image, rhetoric, narrative