Intoning Birds Poetry and Cultural Transformation in Tang & Song China

All the bird imageries present in the poetic compositions turned out in the historical period spanning Tang and Song were undergoing a series of modifications through which they segued from the format generated of primitivism and totemic cult to that characterized by the preponderance of the poetic style of “yong wu” and of relevant rhetorical devices. All the literary works produced in the above specified historical period wear the insignia of cultural fission and re-integration. In the above specified historical period the ancient image of bird as a token of some ancient religious faith was translated into such an image of a very commonplace entity as were usually thought of by the literati. The ancient image of bird which betokened some primitive religious faith went through metamorphoses in the above specified historical period to assume the semblance of a way of living. The bird imageries adopted by Tang or Song range from the image of a deified bird to the entire spectrum of real winged creatures. Thus from the the images of birds we can see the cultural transformation in the Tang & Song Dynasties China.