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Part One: Overview of High Tang Frontier Poetry
Chapter Two: Basic Anatomy of a Subgenre : Key Traits of Frontier Poetry
Before endeavouring to acquaint the reader with the core defining features of frontier poetry
and how the High Tang period further enhanced them, an introduction will be made to a selection of
pre-Tang poetic works often credited with having influenced the imagery and ideas found throughout
the evolution of frontier poetry up to and including the High Tang period. The purpose behind such a
digression is to provide the reader with an impression of how, prior to the Tang, elements of the frontier
poetry subgenre 1 gradually cohered and developed 2. In order to reduce the likelihood of disorganization
from arising and infecting what is a series of temporally diverse poems, a general outline delimiting the
thematic boundaries of frontier poetry will be given through which the poems' relevance in the
formation of frontier poetry can be derived. This broad framework for identifying the sub-generic
standards of frontier poems can be found in the following tripartite system of frontier poetry
characteristics: 3
The first, and most frequently employed, aspect of frontier poetry is reflections and responses to
war on the frontier and facets of military life in such regions. This general theme includes statements of
parting where a person is leaving his home or hometown to serve in the army while his family and/or
1 Here borrowing Owen's use of the term where subgenre “designate[s] classification by subject matter...[whereas] the
term genre [is a] formal, metrical classification.” See Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T'ang (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1977), p. 445.
2 Though the Tang period continues into subsequent decades, I will be limiting discussion up until, though not completely
through, this temporal station as the poems which are the main focus of the latter portion of this thesis – Cen Shen's
frontier poetry – are of the High Tang years (713-765).
3 Adapted from Xiao Chengyu 肖 澄 宇 “Guanyu Tangdai biansaishi pingjia de jige wenti 关 于 唐 代 边 塞 诗 评 价 的 几 个
问 题 ”in Department of Chinese Studies of Northwest Normal University (Xibei shifan xueyuan zhongwenxi 西 北 师 范
学 院 中 文 系 ) and the Academic Journal of Northwest Normal University (Xibei shifan xueyuan xuebao 西 北 师 范 学 报 ),
ed., Tangdai biansashi yanjiu lunwen xuancui 唐 代 边 塞 诗 研 究 论 文 选 粹 (Lanzhou: Gansu jiaoyu chubanshe, 甘 肃 教
育 出 版 社 1988), pp. 19-35.