Research Of Literati Garden In Ming Dynasty

Gardens in Ming Dynasty is the peak of the development of Chinese classical gardens, and the most prosperous gardens among them are the literati gardens, moreover, the record about the gardens in Ming Dynasty are the most abundant compared with the dynasties of past ages. According to the logical order of the garden’s building, constitute and use, this paper is divided into four chapters, including the garden construction, the basic elements of the garden, the garden lives and the function of the record, focused on the study of the literati gardens in Ming dynasty.In the first chapter, with the help of Ming Dynasty landscape works " Yuanye " "Superfluous Things", and etc., the basic principle of cultivating gardens in Ming Dynasty, "Created by man, as if created by nature", is proposed from the perspectives of principles of gardening, and gardening techniques. In this chapter, the important roles of "nature" and "instinctive" in the gardens of Ming Dynasty are pointed out, and then, with the tracing origin of "natural", its performance in literati gardens in Ming Dynasty is analyzed emphatically. The most important and common gardening technique is scenery-borrowing method, which is the main reason for the generation of artistic conception of gardens. Meanwhile, the standard of a successful borrowing is properly and appropriately.Combining the theory of landscape gardening, the second chapter points out that garden consisting of four basic elements:mountains, water, flowers and plants, and buildings. In addition, classifies them one by one in details. Mountain is its skeleton, owning a large variety. As the material of the mountain, the stone is also a very significant factor. If it is said that mountain is the skeleton of the garden, and it is the same for the stone with regard to the mountain. As the garden’s blood, water is mainly divided into four sections, pool, stream, spring and fall, which fills the garden with full of vitality. Flowers and plants are the essence of the garden, and the vitality in the gardens has a close relationship with them. Moreover, techniques for planting flowers and trees have been formed in Ming Dynasty. Building is garden’s soul, and the style of the garden is performed through the building in a large extent.The third chapter includes the host’s residence life and social life in the garden. The owner’s daily life in the garden should be colorful, and according to the different scene in four seasons, the residence life is quite different, mostly could be composed of the following five parts:book-collecting and reading, tea-tasting and antique-admiring, garden-watering and vegetable-planting, supporting parents, and past-meditating. Social life in the garden is composed of the literati Gathering, singing and giving dramatic performances, Appreciating garden collectively, of which literati Gathering is the rally way and contacts media that the literati are keen of in Ming Dynasty.The fourth chapter summary the types of the gardening literature, and analysis their characteristics and purpose. There are numbers of literatures about the gardens in Ming Dynasty, and depended on different classification criteria, they could be divided into different types. Furthermore, the accurate and literary record information plays significant roles in reconstruction of the gardens in Ming Dynasty. There are two aims of the gardening literature:firstly, inheriting by essays, most of the gardens in Ming Dynasty have been disappeared or rebuilt during the Qing Dynasty, and the literatures are the main access for the modern people to feel the flourish of the literati gardens at that time; secondly, it is the advising, which is mainly for advising friends, descendants or the world. The literatures will give the readers warning so that they should not indulge in the gardens, and the struggle of power neither. Everything is eventual, and nothing could be permanent, let alone the gardens.