A Study on the Formation Process of the Xiaoxiang Eight Scenic Spots

Research on the ‘Xiaoxiang Eight Scenic Spots(瀟湘八景)’ has been underway for a long time and has yielded significant results, but there have been clear limitations due to its primarily individual approaches, such as focusing on scenic beauty, painting, and poetry separately. This paper addresses these limitations by expanding the scope to include not just poetry and painting, but also their combination, to examine the entire formation process of Xiaoxiang Eight Scenic Spots. From the perspective of painting, while it is generally understood that the depiction of the landscapes of Xiaoxiang(瀟湘) or Dongjing Lake(洞庭湖) began around the Five Dynasties(五代) period, the study reveals that these depictions actually started appearing frequently from the high-Tang(盛唐) period. In terms of poetry, the ‘Eight-chant Poems(八詠詩)’ by ShenYue(沈約) from the Northern and Southern Dynasties(南北朝) period not only corresponds to the origins of this tradition but also confirms the tendency towards an ‘Eight-chant Series(八詠系列)’. Particularly, in the aspect of combining painting and poetry—an essential characteristic of Xiaoxiang Eight Scenic Spots—DuFu(杜甫) played a pivotal role. For example, ‘inscription on a painting(題畵詩)’ by DuFu on the folding screen paintings by Liu Shaofu(劉少府) encapsulate almost all the classical allusions and imagery related to Xiaoxiang Eight Scenic Spots, as well as the emotions they evoke. Additionally, In the Northern Song Dynasty(北宋), MiFu(米芾) based on a deep understanding of the existing cultural traditions, was the first to propose a new form that fully combined painting and poetry, thus establishing the canonical form of Xiaoxiang Eight Scenic Spots.