Research On The West Garden Of Nanjing In Ming Dynasty

In the middle and late Ming Dynasty,private gardens on the Yangtze Delta prospered unprecedentedly.Relevant literary and artistic creations flourished accordingly.Since Nanjing is the political economic and cultural center of the Yangtze Delta in Ming dynasty,the private garden in Nanjing is quite representative.At that time,the West Garden was one of the famous garden of the Xu Family,the Duke of Wei Guo.The West Garden was as famous as the East Garden,known as the most beautiful garden in Nanjing.With the change of dynasties,the West Garden went through several changes of owners,annihilation,reconstruction,and become Nanjing Yu Garden up to now.However,the West Garden has not been study properly nor gain enough attention relative to its importance.This research try to discuss the relationship between the urban cultural of Nanjing in the Ming Dynasty and the West Garden as a villa far away from Xu Family’s daily home.Furthermore,the author elaborates Wang Shizhen’s travel notes and Wu Bin’s literati painting Swing Game,taking the two as the main clues,compares and links the relevant graphic materials,and discusses the spatial layout characteristics during the operation period of Nanjing West Garden in Ming Dynasty by two generations of garden owner(Xu Tianci and Xu Jixun).In addition,the author takes the West Garden in Ming Dynasty as the starting point to connect the historical context of the change of spatial relationship between the Wu Family Garden and Hu’s Yu Garden which constructed on the former site after time.The purpose of this study is to fill the gap in the study of Nanjing West Garden in the Ming Dynasty,to enrich the methods of restoring the garden with the text of the garden picture scroll,and to try to establish a historical research model of macroscopic-meso-microcosmic integration.The whole thesis contains about 45 000 words,69 pictures and charts.