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The Image of History of the House of Zhou in the Shijing - between Historiography, Ritual, and Literature
Škrabal, Ondřej ; Lomová, Olga (advisor) ; Maršálek, Jakub (referee)
Since the most ancient of the Shijing songs were accompanying the rites of the ancestral sacrifice, which already by definition represented communication with the past, the notion of history is present in these hymns as well. In the latter half of the Western Zhou period, significant changes occurred in the ritual practice. These changes are evident in the shift of perspective in several Zhou song hymns, too. At the same time, the banquet odes appear for the first time on Zhou court. These odes already explicitly describe the glorious history of the house of Zhou, and so become the means of legitimacy of the weakening royal clan. History here also represents the pattern of the exemplary rule and the source of premonitory precedents. By the end of the Western Zhou dynasty, the notion of remote past becomes fully idealized.
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