《Record Of The Listener》 And Song Imperial Examination Society

Record of the Listener (YiJian Zhi), is a renowned novel collection of the Southern Song Dynasty. The author Hong Mai (1123-1202AD), styled Jinglu, alias Yechu.He devoted his whole life in60years to write Record of the Listener (YiJian Zhi). It was recognized as one of the most influential mythical books in Chinese history. It revealed the society, religion, ethics, and folk culture of the Song Dynasty. Particularly, much of its contents related to imperial examinations. The author seemed record different fabulous stories, but the stories help picturing how the imperial examination system infiltrated thorough the society of Song Dynasty. It is very meaningful for not only the research of imperial examination system, but also Record of the Listener.This thesis adopts the mutual confirmation of historical resources and system method, then carrying on the sorting and analysis of the imperial examination historical data to investigate the imperial examination system, and the society of the Song Dynasty related to the imperial examination. This thesis comprises three parts: introduction,the main text and the appendices. In the introduction,I briefly expound the significance of this research work, and describe literature review and the basis of analysis. The main text includes three chapters. Chapter1presents HongMai’s life and his family background, the writing process of Record of the Listener, and the related materials of the imperial examination. Chapter2discusses the values of Record of the Listener. Here, I use the data to analyze the Song dynasty imperial examination system. In the third chapter, I focus on the social activities, the cultural education, the imperial folk, the aspects of the industry chain. The appendix is about the people biographies in the imperial examination of the Southern Song Dynasty.