A Study on the Ideological Connotation and Significance of Agricultural Poetry in the Northern Song Dynasty

Abstract

The agrarian-related poems of the Northern Song Dynasty are far from the realistic creation tradition of the Book of Songs, the Yuefu folk songs of the Han Dynasty, “those who are hungry sing about their food, those who are working about their work”, and the realistic spirit of Du Fu’s “Three officials” and “three different” and Bai Juyi’s New Yuefu Movement, “Only songs live the people’s disease”. Through multiple contrast techniques, they fully show the miserable fate of the peasants under the heavy pressure of land, taxation, labor and other systems in the Northern Song Dynasty. It exposes the social situation of extreme disparity between the rich and the poor and sharp contradictions between classes, and expresses the complex feelings of compassion, hatred and guilt of scholars and literati. Influenced by the social culture of the Song Dynasty, the agriculture-related poems of the Northern Song Dynasty also showed the creative tendency of argumentation and prose culture, which was different from the previous poetry, and demonstrated the unique artistic style of the Song poetry.