Becoming Popular: Publishing Transition In Song Dynasty

Through the non-linear thinking ways and cross-course research ways and from the angle of cultural propagation, this research researches the periodic features of publishing in Song Dynasty, discloses the developmental traces of publishing in Song Dynasty and its importance in the history of Chinese publishing: it opens up a new era for cultural propagation by its own transition, thus it promotes the cultural reasons of publishing and the self-consciousness of cultural propagation, and throbs the pulse of our national culture.This research talks about the basic national policies"ruling the country through culture"in Song Dynasty from the four different angles which are respecting Ru thinking ways and scholar-officials, widening the imperial examination system, the activities of setting up schools, searching for books and compiling books."Governing the country with the scholar-officials", the way of administering a country, developed the political promise"not declaring people's guilty by their words", thus it made the subjective consciousness of the scholar-officials reach an all-time high. They thought highly praise of"being the first to become concerned with the world's troubles and the last to rejoice in its happiness", they submitted a memorial on government policy, gathered students to give lectures, and wrote books, they wrote the brilliant works for"making everything spiritful, letting the vast people live happily, taking over those Ru Saints'brilliant thinkings and studies, and opening up a new peaceful and prosperous world."Publishing in Song Dynasty just conformed to the historical trend of the times under this kind of social circumstances.The author puts much emphasis on an important reason for promoting publishing transition in Song Dynasty──the revolution in the field of the mass media, that is, the popularization of the archaic printery. This research focuses on the academic difficulties, clears up the misunderstanding of movable-type printing on the basis of academic criticism, clears up the strong influence of propagation which conceals the truth of invention, analyzes the reasons why movable-type printing lost in propagation. This research observes and studies the traditional views of"the movable-type printing started in the middle age of Tang Dynasty, and prospered in Song Dynasty", and detailed studies the start point when China began the time of the movable-type printing. The revolution in the field of the mass media helps the innovation of publishing. Besides the researches on the overall situation of books publishing in Song Dynasty, the thesis tries to reconstruct the publishing about Ru classics under the world of thinking and belief, and the historican publishing which are about constructing social life discipline together, and talk about"the cultural choice of publishing propagation". The special choice way of the publishing activities to cultural choice decides culture defining and publishing closely associate with each other and like the shadow follow the person. Through publishing, some culture become focus, some become edge. This research talks about"cultural defining of the publishing propagation"from striking the illegal publishing, the literary inquisition and banned books."Cultural selection"and"cultural defining"are a display of publishing, as a type of culture propagation, becoming popular.This thesis also talks about publishing transition in Song Dynasty from the angle of culture innovation. It mainly includes four aspects: firstly, the bookstore of Temple of Premier prospered highly reflects cultural tension of Song publishing; secondly, it researches publishing pushes"books using unified letters"to a new stage from publishing popularization in the ancient Chinese prose activities and Song typeface becoming publishing totem; thirdly, it analyzes how did publishing rights protection system form inSong Dynasty, and its features and reasons; fourthly, it talks about the origin and development of tabloids, and explores the reasons why tabloids develop fast. The author thinks when publishing becomes the major cultural propagation way in Song Dynasty, it promotes cultural value addition. Cultural innovation is an important reflection of cultural value addition, not only it adds cultural quantities but also it promotes cultural qualities. Publishing transition promotes cultural popularization in Song Dynasty. Publishing reaches an all-time high, it makes culture propagandized and merged in the course of gathering and conformity. The publishing popularization in the movement of the ancient stylistic article and Song-type printing characters became publishing totem, which pushed"booking using the same type of words"to a new stage. Providing wide studying opportunities for people and the countryside education having been in the ascendant marked the civilized education tendency in Song. People learn best will be a government official, Song scholars tried their best to push this forward. The books circulation crossing bounds, especially some foreign languages translation edition of Chinese books made Chinese civilization propagandize to the south and the north, thus it widened and consolidated Ru cultural circles.The research way of this thesis is to research Song publishing as a kind of cultural pattern, this kind of research is not only good to throb the pulse of our Song publishing culture, but also good to promote the rational spirits of publishing culture. In the course of research, the author bases himself upon two points: firstly, he not only uses value judge, but also puts emphasis on facts judge, thus he can judge cultural control, cultural defining, cultural propagation and cultural creation from an overall view; secondly, it throbs the pulse of our Chinese culture on the basis of the study that publishing pushes culture develop forward and social progress.The author thinks Song publishing which takes the prosper of movable-type printing as a marker has finished its transition, and Song culture which takes rationalistic Confucian philosophy as its marker has a great difference from Han and Tang culture, and its basic meaning is that it opens a new development way for Chinese traditional culture.