Art - Aesthetic Perspective Northern Song Dynasty Taoism And Literature

This dissertation is committed to study the Chinese Taoism culture by presenting a detailed exploration of the interaction between Taoism and literature from the point of view of "art-aesthetic appreciation". It elaborates on Taoism and the literature of the Northern Song Dynasty in order to display the connection between Taoism and the literature art, as well as literati aesthetics in the Northern Song Dynasty.In addition to introduction, the dissertation consists of five chapters, respectively, with the first chapter dealing with the development process of Taoism and traditional literature, as well as Taoism literature and literati aesthetics during the10th century, the second chapter the selection of spirituality, the third chapter the integration of thoughts, the fourth chapter the direction of creation, and the fifth chapter the feelings of aesthetics.Chapter One:Connection-the interaction of culture. Taoism and literature belongs to different cultural patterns with different cultural functions. Although, there is no absolute separation and fracture between them, Taoism and literature enjoys similar aspects in artistic creation and aesthetic activities as they have the same aesthetic emotion and always put emphasis up on illusions, imaginations and aspirations.Chapter Two:Exploration-the selection of spirituality. The Northern Song Dynasty is the critical period of ancient Chinese social transformation. Song-type culture had an impressive transformation and exploration, which is different from Tang-type culture. The change of Daoism and literature is mainly manifested in two aspects:on one hand, The cultural essence of Taoism in the Northern Song Dynasty was gradually focused on rationality and Inwardness; On the other hand, The artistic essence of literature in the Northern Song Dynasty leaned heavily on reasons and emotions.Chapter Three:Intersection-the integration of thoughts. There is a certain degree of intersection between Taoist practice thoughts and literary creation thoughts. More specifically speaking, the former took spiritual cultivation as the main content of Taoist practice and regarded "Serenity" as the purport of spiritual cultivation. Meanwhile, the latter took mental improvement as the connotation of literary creation and regarded "Tranquility" as the condition to excite the artistic imagination. In short, they both paid more attention to the cultivation of the mind and the pursuit of a peaceful state of mind.Chapter Four:Product-the direction of creation. As the product of Taoism and literature, Taoism literature showed its diversity in different styles and forms of art literature such as poems, songs and novels. Within all forms above, the Taoism poems played the most important role in Northern Song dynasty as it reflected mainstream creative direction of Taoism literature. From the point of view of art-aesthetic appreciation, the Taoism literature with different theme presented different aesthetic pursuit, which was reflected in the following four aspects:the beauty of mystery in the literature about alchemy; the beauty of ultra-secularity in the literature about immortals; the beauty of nature in the literature about landscape; the beauty of immortal in the literature about temples.Chapter Five:Sentiment-the feelings of aesthetics. Taoism culture had a tremendous influence on the aesthetic sense of the literati in the Northern Song Dynasty. Lots of famous literati tended to express Taoist aesthetic feelings in their literary works, such as Lin Bu, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and Zhou Bangyan. They personally practiced the Taoist aesthetic ideal personality in their own life and artistic creation.This dissertation, therefore, is aiming to study the association between Taoism and traditional literature with the application of both the logical analysis of text as well as the historical exposition based on the study of historical facts. In addition, specific analysis method was used to study the internal composition and value of Taoist literary works. The research results will be a useful complement to the study of Taoism culture, also, from the broader academic perspective, it could be one step towards the new field of the intersection of Taoism, literature and aesthetics.