The Hermeneutical Tradition Of Chinese Anceint Garden Design

With the view of considering understanding and interpretation as the fundamental form of being, hermeneutics exerts considerable influences on contemporary aesthetics and practices of fine arts in the West. While in ancient Chinese aesthetics a large amount of ideas and theories presenting a hermeneutical sense can also be found. It has gone even further in directing art practices including poetry, paintings, and garden and has obtained great achievements. This outstanding tradition, however, has not received enough attention deserved. Research concerned still remained undone. Under this condition, this thesis conducts a research on ancient gardens. On the basis of ancient aesthetics theories, documents, and introducing contemporary hermeneutics, it aims to reveal the hermeneutical tradition within Chinese ancient garden design.The thesis is composed of four parts. I. it points out that ancient Chinese's view of value of"words bearing Tao","arts bearing Tao"presents an ontological hermeneutics wisdom. Arts was where ancient Chinese intellectuals'spirit inhabited. While under the compound dwelling pattern of Rites(li) and Arts(Yue), ancient houses and gardens bore the character of rites and arts respectively. It therefore can be concluded that garden—as a form of arts—was with the nature of spirit inhabitation. II. On the level of methodology, it discussed the tradition from two aspects. On one hand, based on the thoughts of Confucius'"gaining the new from the old"and"re-creating by interpreting", it made an analysis on the tradition of creation by citing literary. It also summarized two ways of creation—"image reproduced"and"image revealed". In this way, it emphasized that the way of interpreting tradition in a creative way was the means for ancient Chinese to fulfill"fusing of horizon"and the way to practice"spirit inhabitation". On the other hand, based on the traditional hermeneutical category system"word (yan)-image (xiang)-meaning (yi)", it analyzed the sequence of development of a series of categories"image(xiang)-image beyond image(xing xiang)-field of images and meanings (yi jing)", revealing the connotation of"spirit inhabitation"of yijing. It then centered on the hermeneutical character of yi-jing, which is integration, subjectivity and infinity, to discuss the tradition of creating yi-jing by producing poetry. It also analyzed the phenomenon that hermeneutical theories have been employed in garden design on the level of forms, in order to create yi-jing. III. The thesis explored the origin of hermeneutics in China from three aspects—language, characters and way of thinking. It pointed out that xiang was the ultimate cause of Chinese hermeneutics. IV. It conducted several case studies, focused on imperial gardens of the Qing Dynasty. Based on literary and document concerned, especially the poetry of Emperor Qianlong's, it carried out a detailed analysis on the hermeneutical methods employed by garden designers. It illustrated the great achievements that the hermeneutical tradition of garden design has obtained. And it can be used for reference by contemporary practices of garden design.Key words: hermeneutics, ancient garden design, spirit inhabitation, yi-jing (field of images and meanings), yi-xiang(image), citing literary, xing (producing poetry when inspired by the Nature)...