A Study On The Preface To Collected Works Of Song Writtrn By The Song People

The preface obtained considerable development in the Song Dynasty, not only in terms of large amount, but also in term of its unique ideological content and artistic characteristics.This paper mainly studies The Preface to the Collected Works of Song Written by the Song people through gathering the statistics on its amount, summering up the differences in amount between the Southern Song Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty and its characteristics of distribution, and analyzing the background and reasons for its rapid development.According to its main content The Preface to the Collected Works of Song Written by the Song people can be divided into two categories:one is the preface about the author whose life experience, values, ideas of literal writing and academic tendency are the major content; the other is the preface about the works which mainly introduces the compilers, compiling process, naming, content and its edition etc.The third part captures the overall artistic features of The Preface to the Collected Works of Song Written by the Song people. In the historical development of prefaces and collected works, it represented a clear view from its historical perspective; its strengthened narrativity and lyricism created more distinctive characters; prevailed reasoning style of it made it extremely speculative and rational.By comparison with previous prefaces, this paper explores the transitional role of The Preface to the Collected Works of Song Written by the Song people in the development of the preface and analyzes its historical, aesthetic and bibliopolical value.