Song Dynasty Landscape Culture: Contradictions and Success of an Ideal of Harmony

Abstract

The landscape culture of Song dynasty has an idea l of harmony that goes from the individual to the whole society. But this ideal of harmony, no matter how good its intentions, also had its dark sides, contradictions and failures. This paper puts together the failures and the positive aspect presented by the ideal of harmony in landscape culture. This dialectical strategy will show the complexity of the historical process of the Song dynasty landscape culture, as well as its aims, contradictions and good outcomes. Thus, the paper proposes an approach of Song landscape studies that analyses the actual relationship between gardens, natural environment, landscape paintings and other related manifestations during Song Dynasty. It focuses especially on gardens, recalling that gardens are not only a pure land of spiritual issues, but also a social expression of power. lt first sums up the evolution of researches in the field of gardens in the introduction, and develops in the first part the question of the dark side of gardens, with the social competition and material speculation it implies, through three examples of Song gardens. Then, in the second part, the paper focuses on the utopian landscape, starting with the dreamed one, before studying the relationship between landscape, education and mental hygiene.