The Object-Centered Playing Field: On the Playful Characteristics and Poetic Creation of Song Dynasty Gift-Giving Poetry

Along with the daily and frequent gift-giving activities of the scholars, the number of gift-giving poems written during the Song Dynasty increased significantly compared to the previous times, and the writing interest also underwent a new change, showing an enhanced playfulness. The formation of this feature is related to the more egalitarian and intimate form of communication among people of the Song Dynasty, implying a challenge to programmed ceremonial writing and bringing about special poetic creations. First of all, the poet will write in a hypothetical way, through a variety of rhetoric such as personification, metaphor, homophonic puns, etc., to express the gift in reality as a completely different image, and on this basis, re-depict the process of gifting, giving it a different situation from reality. Secondly, the poet will re-establish the role of the recipient in the poem, or add unrelated characters into the poem in addition to the two parties, so as to strengthen the sense of drama and plot of the poem. In addition, Song poets also like to write "gifts that didn't come" and other accidents in the process of gift-giving. By reinterpreting the causes and processes of gift-giving accidents, the poets transformed material "lack" into artistic "creation". The playful gift-giving poems reflect the development of the narrative art of Song poetry, enrich fiction, a poetic art that has not been fully valued in the classical poetic tradition, and also make gift-giving a special artistic activity. Gifts are like "transitional objects" between the real world and the poetic world, helping poets establish a specific playing field, transcend the boundaries of real logic and gain spiritual pleasure and freedom in imagination and fiction.