Northern Song Dynasty Palace Word Study

Palace poems are a unique kind of poetic style in ancient Chinese poetry.It began in the Tang Dynasty, and developed prosperously till the Northern Song Dynasty, when the specific and subject environment exerted a very important influence on its development. Social and political stability, plus with economic development, have promoted the prosperity of the court culture, in which environment the palace poems arise and become thriving. Moreover, the establishment of more and more imperial parks provided a natural environment for the creation of palace poems. Even the supreme emperor Song Hui Zong and a number of ministers became the huge body for the creation of palace poems. Under this condition, the amount of palace poems created at that time was up to more than 800, mostly adopting the form of large-scale seven-syllable poems and containing a considerable amount of information. The subjects mainly include royal festivals and customs, the royal entertainment and arts, weddings and strange affairs in the court, the life of the palace maids, the political customs in the court and diplomatic relationships with other countries, all displayed from all-round angles and facets. All these contents present a picture of the daily life of both lower and higher-ranking class people in the court of Northern Song Dynasty. Also, influenced by individual artistic refinement and aesthetic standards of different writers, the palace poems of Northern Song Dynasty is characterized as rich and gaudy, yet fresh and elegant. Besides inheriting the artistic styles, the subject matters and the titles of poems from the palace poetry of the Tang and Five Dynasties, the palace poems of Song also had some new changes in value orientation and source of subject, which make it become an important part in the whole circle of the Song poetry research.