生命的咏叹调 ：探讨林黛玉以花为题的诗词 = The Aria of life : a discussion of Lin Dai-yu’s poems on flora (original) (raw)

This essay will analyse the poems, specifically, those that adopt flora as their main imagery, that Lin Dai-yu composed in the first 80 Chapters of the "Dream of the Red Mansion", using the constructs of "Eros" and "death instinct", which are put forth by Sigmund Freud. The long poems "zang hua yin" (the song of burying flowers) and "tao hua xing" (poem to eulogize peach blossoms) will be critiqued, as well as various short poems such as "daiyu ti pa shi" (the three poems that Dai-yu wrote on the handkerchief given to her by Bao-yu), "juhua shi" (the three poems extolling chrysanthemum), and "tang duo ling, yong xu" (the poem singing praises of cotton). The approach taken in this essay will be to view Dai-yu as a person, instead of a fictitious character, so as to apply the psychoanalytical tools to her, in the hope of uncovering the struggles of Eros and the death instinct in her unconscious mind. Through this approach, the essay will establish that Dai-yu holds a zealous outlook on life.