On Art Of Dongjing Royal Garden In Northern Song Dynasty

Northern Song dynasty is a period with prosperous economy, culture and stable society. There are more opportunities for gardens to be built in this background. The gardening art of Song dynasty was affected by that of Sui-Tang dynasties and has influence on Ming-Qing dynasties. So it has a very high status in the history of classical Chinese gardening art. As the capital in Northern Song dynasty, Dongjing has gardens spreads all over the city with developed gardening art. Especially the gardening art of royal garden, which condensed the artistic prime of Northern Song dynasty, has very high value in history, culture and art. This dissertation researches on the art of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty and chooses seven representative royal gardens as the research object. They are Four xanadu gardens of Dongjing, Hoe Yuan imperial garden, Yan-fu palace and Gen Yue imperial garden. Their history, layout, style, element, culture and developing process are all key points of this dissertation. I expect the research can make it better to emerge the art of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty and appraise the value of it in classical Chinese gardening art.There are seven parts of this dissertation: 1. Introduction. It briefly generalize the research object, present situation and the meaning of this research. 2.The condition of economic, society and culture in Northern Song dynasty and the entironment of Dongjing in that period. 3.The developing process of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty. Dividing the developing process into two parts, the inheriting earlier stage and the developing later stage. It chooses four xanadu gardens of Dongjing as the representative of the earlier stage and Hoe Yuan imperial garden, Yan-fu palace and Gen Yue imperial garden as that of the later stage. 4.The general situation and the analysis about the gardening art of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty. This part is the first stress of this dissertation. With the textual research and the analysis of the seven representative royal gardens, we can sum up the characteristics of different kind of gardens in different time and thereby restore garden Yu-jin, Qiong-lin, hoe Yuan and some other gardens. 5. The sum-up of the art of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty. This part is the second stress of this dissertation. It concludes the characteristic of garden scale, spatial layout, function, technique of scenery processing and the cultural context via the longitudinal contrast the art of Northern Song dynasty with that of Qin-Han, Sui-Tang dynasties. 6. The inheritance and development of the art of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty. This chapter mainly discusses the influence to royal garden of Southern Song dynasty and the later and that to gardens of Korea and Japan by the royal garden in Northern Song dynasty. 7. Epilogue. This part concludes the whole style and characteristic of the two periods of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty.It divides the developing process of royal garden in Northern Song dynasty into two stages in this dissertation, which are the inheriting earlier stage and the developing later stage. It chooses Four xanadu gardens of Dongjing as the representative of the earlier stage and Hoe Yuan imperial garden, Yan-fu palace and Gen Yue imperial garden as that of the later stage. It divides the gardens into two parts to discuss by the characteristic they have at the same time. It restores exploring some of the royal garden. To sum up the characteristics of the art of Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty, it uses the methods of analysis, reasoning, contrast and induction. It considers that the earlier stage of the royal garden in Northern Song dynasty inherits many gardening methods of Qin-Han, Sui-Tang dynasties. The gardens often have natural sceneries, which like the hunting garden, with succinct and sparse spatial layout in the decrease situation of garden scale. The whole layout of Four xanadu gardens of Dongjing implies the symbolic significance of five mountains. Topics gardens with different style have been formed vary in their building time and context. They lay particular stress on different gardening factor, which manifests the developing process of the earlier stage of the royal garden in Northern Song dynasty from simple to complex function and content. It has great development on the layout of gardening factors, the harmony between sights and the satisfaction of functions compared with the past. The royal garden absorbs the merit of the prophase gardening in the developing later stage. The landscape system is more complete and fine. Cosmically mountain construction appears in the royal garden. The technique and art of the mountain construction all reach very high level. Because of the decrease of the garden scale, mountain construction in the royal garden changes from realistic to enjoyable. Combine with the increasingly mature and baptize traditional Chinese painting technique, it applies the painting theory into the mountain construction. In the aspect of water layout, there are abundant water forms in the upper garden of Northern Song dynasty. It forms a complete and flowing river system with nearly all the natural water forms. Water layout pays more attention to the harmony between water, stones, buildings and plant. After all, the Dongjing royal garden in Northern Song dynasty is at the transition stage of classical Chinese garden history.There are two innovations of this dissertation. The first one is dividing the developing process into two stages with deeply research on the royal garden in Northern Song dynasty. Summarizing separately the characteristics of different gardens in different stages, it thereby disproof the two stages'divisions. The second one is that bold imagination and recovery work of some gardens are done recur to the literature textual research and analysis at the same time. It tries to proof the important role they have play like Yu-Jin garden, Qiong-Lin garden and hoe yuan, which are neglected, in the developing process of royal garden in Northern Song dynasty.