The Chang'an Palace In The Tang Dynasty And The Creation Of Tang Poems

There are several royal palaces in Chang’an, the capital city in Tang Dynasty, and its suburb areas, in which more than five hundred of classic poems living on for generations. Those palaces had seen the rise and fall of dynasties, providing valuable materials for literary creation, and in turn, the literature recorded the appearance of those palaces in all their glories, enabling the decedents to depict the picture of the great Tang Dynasty. This study is based on all the poems involving royal palaces in Chang’an, aiming to explore the dynamics between royal palaces and poem creation of the Tang Dynasty.Part 1 is the introduction, which included the following contents:significance of the study, status quo of this area, and brief description of the study subjects and contents (involving the definition of some conceptions and distinguishing with similar ones).Part 2 is the body of the study, separated into 4 parts.Chapter 1 is the general introduction of royal palaces in Chang’an.Those palaces were widely spread, and mainly included’San Da Nei’,’San Yuan’, Hall of Glorious Purity Hua Qing Palace (renowned for the fountain), Jiucheng Palace (famous summer palace), Cuiwei Palace (situated in the foot of Zhong Nan Mountain), and Yuhua Palace (resided in Tong Chuan city). Based on the achievements of historiography, archaeology and other subjects, a brief introduction was present on their locations, layout, functions, important pavilions or palaces, historic roles and their delineation in poetry of the Tang Dynasty.Chapter 2 focused on the intersection point of those palaces with poets’ activities. Firstly, the subject is’Zao Chao’, which is a very complicated system, involving waichao zhongchao and neichao, of which the locations, etiquettes, contents and the roles differed significantly, therefore, the emphasis was different for poem creations. Secondly, it is’Su Zhi’,and this topic was explored widely to express different feelings (patriotism, miss, love and so on).Finally, the subject also include entertainment activities:dance and game, of which the most-chanted is Melody of White Feathers Garment (famous royal court dance) and "the Operatic Circle"(royal musical institution).Chapter 3 discussed the themes of poems on royal palaces. The primary category is to eulogize the emperor, which was reflected in a variety of poems and was run through the whole period of Tang Dynasty, and this theme could be analyzed in different levels in different period. The second important theme is to portrait the sorrow of the servants in those palaces, including directly describing the sorrow life of imperial concubines or narrating the sadness experience of princess themselves, and expressing the poets’ desire of official rank via the complaints of the court maids to the emperor. Additionally, the popular work in the middle and later periods of Tang Dynasty:chanting the history and cherishing the past, became the symbol of recalling the glorious periods in contrast with the current situation, while voiced their criticisms.Chapter 4 analyzed the features of those poems in the perspective of artistic value. Those poems were the inheritance and development of the previous literary works about palace, from the perspective of history of literature, and the contributions of the rules and forms of classical poetic composition with the descriptive mode of those poems propelled poems of Tang Dynasty to the top, and the poems on forlorn palaces were extensively referred in the work of later generations.Part three is the conclusion.