Research on Garden Architecture of Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty from the Perspective of Poetry and Literature Information Analysis
YANG Weihao
ZHANG Wei
ZHOU Rufan
Abstract：Ancient poems have significant textual information related to architectural elements and human geography,which can help find traces of historical architecture in a city.Chang'an City during the Tang Dynasty had large-scale garden architecture,spread across all neighborhoods.However,there is a lack of objective knowledge about this architecture during the Tang Dynasty.This study attempts to understand the characteristics of the garden architecture at that time by analyzing the literati's perception of it through poetic impressions.
Based on a previous collection of poems about gardens in Chang'an City during the Tang Dynasty,a total of 608 relevant ancient poems were screened based on the premise that the temporal and spatial information of the associated poems could be determined from the titles and authors.These poems involve 99 gardens;the architectural information and corresponding spatial and temporal information contained in the poems were interpreted to study the garden architecture of Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty from the level of poetic impressions.The extracted building units were categorized into four building types,including residential,terrace,recreational,and temple.For poems corresponding to the architectural units,the time of writing can be inferred from the biographies of the authors.The garden poems corresponding to the architectural units can be used to know the specific location of the garden architecture perceived by the literati.Based on the abovementioned analysis,the architectural units in the text are extracted using the text mining tool and then classified to explore the literati's architectural perceptions of different types of gardens,as well as the architectural perceptions of the gardens in Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty in different periods.Secondly,the architectural units mentioned in the poems and texts were spatially located,and the perceived distribution pattern of architecture was analyzed using the geospatial quantification method.Finally,the spatial relationship and spatio-temporal evolution of gardens in Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty were explored according to their perceived distribution over four periods.
The study shows that the literati have a strong perception of"Qujiang Scenic Area","Leyouyuan Scenic Area",and"City West Villa Area"in the Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty,and were impressed by the high and large-scale buildings,including observation buildings and ceremonial buildings.Further,the literati's perception of a certain type of building was found to be characterized by the corresponding region.The literati's perception of buildings in different types of gardens was characterized by different features.Public gardens,royal gardens,private gardens,and temple gardens left deep impressions on the literati for their building architecture,temple architecture,recreational architecture,and residential architecture.With time,the architectural units changed from a scattered distribution into a centralized distribution,with the distribution center shifting from the east to the west of the city.The distribution of garden architecture in different periods perceived by the literati was related to their construction degree and characteristics of the era.
In the context of poetic impressions,architectural information and corresponding spatiotemporal information were extracted from poems about gardens.Moreover,the perception of garden buildings in Chang'an City during the Tang Dynasty was analyzed and calculated through quantitative and geospatial methods,which achieved good results.On the one hand,it extends research methods of garden architecture,rather than limiting it to literature reviews or archaeological excavation.In addition,the results are corroborated by the findings of previous researchers who used other methods.On the other hand,in contrast to previous studies on the perception of individual garden architecture,this study reviewed the perceived distribution and changes of garden architecture in Chang'an City during the Tang Dynasty from the macro spatial level of the city,and proves the feasibility of historical GIS in the spatial analysis of garden architecture.In conclusion,the in-depth excavation of garden poems bridges the gap in research on garden architecture in Chang'an City during the Tang Dynasty and provides novel ideas to investigate buildings in Chang'an City.
Keywords：garden architectureChang'an City of the Tang Dynastygarden poetryhistorical GISdigital humanities
Publication Date：2025-02-27
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：9( 95-103 )