The Peonies of Luoyang: Images of the Literati Garden

Professor Kenneth J. Hammond with the Department of History at New Mexico State University will host a talk on Peonies.

Peonies have always had a place of prominence in the gardens of Luoyang, one of the ancient capitals of China. Kenneth J. Hammond, professor of history at New Mexico State University, will examine Luoyang gardens as the classic model for the evolution of the "literati garden" of the cultivated scholar gentry, tracing how images of its gardens during the Tang, Song and Ming periods (7th to 17th centuries), evolved into familiar motifs in later Chinese writings about culture, taste, poetry and art, design, etc.