Buckley Ebrey Patricia, Bickford Maggie (ed.) Emperor Huizong and late Northern Song China: the politics of culture and the culture of politics

Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2006. — xx; 625 p., tables, maps, figures & index. Harvard East Asian Monographs 266.
ISBN: 0-74-02127-4How do Huizong and his reign fit into the history of the Song period? In recent decades scholars have added tremendously to our knowledge of Chinese society, state, and culture during Song times. China durig the reign of Huizong's father, Shenzong, is particularly well studied, undoubtedly because of the signifiance of the New Policies introduced by Wang Anshi and the reaction that they provoked. We no longer have to be satisfid with simplistic accounts of a moral struggle between good and evil. Intellectual, literary, and art history all now ground develop­ments during the period in the great politial controversies of the time.