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Demotion and Literature in the Middle and Late Northern Song Dynasty

Wu Zenghui

419K0

Since Wang Anshi and Xining's reform, party struggles have become increasingly fierce and politics have gone through several iterations. In the process, a large number of officials were demoted from the court, even to the extreme poverty. Demotion became the political norm in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. The decline of political status will naturally affect their cultural mentality and be reflected in literary creation. Under the pressure of being relegated, scholar-bureaucrats escaped from reality, avoided direct confrontation with authoritarian forces, and used Buddhist Zen to relieve their pain. This mentality made the pursuit of "plainness" and the respect for "law" become the basic tendency of literature, especially poetry creation, in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. The group of poets generally showed a transformation from worshiping Su to studying Huang, and eventually formed the influential Jiangxi School of Poetry, which profoundly changed the literary landscape of the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. All of this is the result of the complex changes in political culture since the early Song Dynasty, and demotion is undoubtedly an extremely important link and even a decisive factor.