Shared Dream, Rewritten Dream : The Circulation of Desire in a Chinese Classical Tale

This article is an analysis of a 17th-century Chinese tale, which is one of the many rewritings of a single dream narrative. This version is original in so far as it shifts the main perspective, so that the message of the dream replies to the one of the previous textual version. This collection of texts allows a “circulation” of this dream, which one may define “collective” – because it is shared both by several characters and by several authors.