This thesis approaches the nature of imperial education from the perspective of classical symposia of the Song Dynasty and explores how the scholar-officials in these symposia extract political ideals from the poetry of the Shi Jing. This topic involves connecting selected poetic works with the classical symposia system and is divided into six chapters. The first chapter discusses the research motivation. The second chapter introduces the historical development of the Song Dynasty classical symposia system, while the third chapter explains the influence of the poetry of the Shi Jing on imperial education. The fourth chapter examines the qualities required of the emperor in order to engage in his righteous self-cultivation from the teachings found in the selected poetic works, including rectification of the mind, character, emotions, and finally, his external appearance of authority. The fifth chapter outlines how the scholar-officials in the classical symposia expect the emperor to manage his worldly affairs, such as regulating the family, appointing officials according to their merits, governing to the benefit of the people as well as resisting the enemy and restoring the country. This chapter further describes the specific reasons that scholar-officials give for believing that the emperor is practicing outer kingliness in concrete ways. The sixth chapter concludes with a summary of the results of previous chapters, proposes limitations of this research, and suggests topics for future investigation.
Scholar-officials in the classical symposia consider “Airs of the States” to be the most important of the three major parts of the Shi Jing. Regarding the main theme of each chapter and irrespective of the different eras of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, their ability to internalize the themes of the poetry stems predominantly from the introduction given in The Preface to the Shi Jing, thus showing that this actually exerts a considerable degree of influence on the multifaceted development of the Shi Jing during the entire Song Dynasty. In terms of the content of the poetry, during the Qingli Period of Emperor Renzong of Song, scholar-officials often emphasize the satirical and remonstrative elements of the poetry, which are also called, “Lessons for Governance.” As a result of the rise of Confucianism, the corresponding relationship between man and destiny, inner cultivation of his morality, visionary foresight for managing worldly affairs, and other such ideals are integrated into the poetry by scholar-officials. The purpose of this is to push the emperor towards taking measures to put the ideals of Confucian scholarship into practice through the study of classics and politics. Therefore, it can be seen from the Song Dynasty classical symposia on the poetry of the Shi Jing that, on the one hand, Confucians in the Song Dynasty manage worldly affairs together with the emperor, while on the other hand, they also work together to promote academic development.