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hibernal (cold). The first section treats the thermal frontier setting by examining how the poet-narrators
of four key poems follow a selfsame progression in focalizing the poems' opening “hot” theme and
initial sub-theme, and then retain, to varying degrees of consistency, parallel approaches in how
following sub-themes of the thermal frontier are perceived through a variety of “lenses” in both
ordinary and imaginary modes of focalization. The section ends by examining the natural violence
perceived within several of these hot landscapes, expressions of thermality that scorch and burn the
broader frontier environment while simultaneously uniting the texts through the manner in which the
landscape's aggressive conflagration is perceived by the poet-narrators.
Section two of chapter five addresses poems in which the “cold” frontier landscape is dominant.
The ensuing discussion draws attention to how the poet-narrators in Cen Shen's hibernal landscapes
use definite patterns of shifting focalization to convey imagisitc details of the setting, and how these
patterns are found in each of the poems that feature a well developed cold environment. These shifts
occur in the spatial coordinates of focalization, the alterations in attention to active and inert features
of the hibernal landscape, and the perception of two types of cold objects emphasizing the freezing
conditions of the northwestern frontier.
Chapter six examines the relationship between homesickness and the focalization of the
frontier of vast distances. After introducing some of the more common tropes for expressing nostalgic
feelings for home, the chapter proceeds with an investigation into how acts of perception themselves
are able to convey the inner emotional state of the poet-narrator. One area of analysis is the direction of
the poet-narrator's gaze, and how its spatial coordinates alone bespeak feelings of homesickness and
separation. The other aspect considered is how by focalizing the mobile characteristics of objects both
living and non-living the poet-narrator expresses a wish to lessen the distance between himself and his
home east of the frontier.
By narrowing the scope of analysis to the poet-narrators' focalization of Cen Shen's three
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