Poetry Spread And Distinction Of Taste

The literati garden of Jiangnan in the Ming Dynasty has been regarded as the model of Chinese classical garden.However,there is a lack of reflection on how the prestige and status had been shaped.Based on materials including poems,essays and notes of gardens from literatus of the Ming Dynasty,this paper aims to explain how the literati garden has become the model through adopting the method of literature analysis.Through the combing of garden literature,it can be found that,on the one hand,garden literature in the Ming Dynasty has inherited traditions since Wei,Jin,Tang and Song Dynasties in terms of article style,hermit feelings and content creation.On the other hand,garden literature of the Ming Dynasty further developed in its description techniques,interest and charm of gist as well as the number of works,forming a prosperous creative atmosphere.Combining the background of the development of Ming garden literature,this paper invokes French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory with the concepts of “distinction”,“taste”,etc.It mainly explained that the literati group utilized cultural capital to construct the standard for judging the quality of gardens and to enable the standard to be recognized by the public through writing poems and essays.Meanwhile,the literati group incorporated gardeners' morals and achievements into the evaluation system of gardens,and constructed a “cultural garden” that surpassed the existing architecture.The literati group took advantage of the cultural capital to make the literati garden stand out from many private gardens by virtue of repeated writing and singing poems and essays.As a result,the literati garden has been pursued and admired by people and their descendants,and eventually became cultural symbols and gained immortal prestige in history.