Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red ChamberSurprisingly little has been written in Western languages about the eighteenth century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, perhaps the supreme masterpiece of its entire tradition. In this study, Andrew H. Plaks has used the conceptual tools of comparative literature to focus on the novel's allegorical elements and narrative structure. He thereby succeeds in accounting for the work's greatness in terms that do justice to its own narrative tradition