The Book of Songs is the first collection of poems in ancient my country, and banquet poems are an important part of the Book of Songs. To correctly understand the banquet poems in The Book of Songs, the study of etiquette and its implications is indispensable.
From the perspective of ancient literature around the world, a large number of poems with banquets as the theme have appeared, and China's "Book of Songs" is a special case. The delicious food at the banquet and the mutual praise between the guests and hosts make people misunderstand the evaluation of banquet poems. We know that banquet poems are mainly poems that directly reflect the etiquette activities such as feasting ceremony and Yanli ceremony in Jiali. Jiali is an etiquette used to integrate interpersonal relationships, communicate feelings, and establish friendship.
The banquet poem occupies a place in the Book of Songs. It reflects the banquet scenes among relatives, guests, monarchs and ministers in the Zhou Dynasty. It helps the Emperor of Zhou to strengthen and maintain his political power and embodies the meaning of patriarchal clan. and the way of governing the country, and includes the Zhou people's etiquette, music, and moral standards of kinship, respect for etiquette, and emphasis on virtue.
The chants about the human relations between brothers and the righteousness of monarchs and ministers that constantly appear in banquet poems are mainly about the dependence of the individual on the whole, and the blessing of the whole to the premise of the individual's existence. That is to strengthen the patriarchal blood relationship and maintain and consolidate political power. It has a certain religious and superstitious color.
Many of the early banquet poems were combined with sacrifices, describing the family feast after the sacrifices. "Xiaoya Chuci" is a representative example of this type of sacrificial and feasting poems. However, the form of ancestor worship in ancestral temples also has an important function, which is to enable people of the same clan to gain psychological recognition and closeness, and to strengthen and condense clan blood relationships.
Through the above analysis, we have a general understanding of the ideological connotation and functional role of banquet poems in the Book of Songs. During the banquet, it strengthened the sentiments of the clan and maintained the stability of the Zhou regime. On the one hand, it created harmonious interpersonal relationships as a means of governing the country; on the other hand, it embodied some aspects of the ritual and music culture of the Zhou Dynasty in the form of literature, and had The educational role of moral norms. However, its ideological value is more worthy of our further study and exploration.