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Supervisory Committee
Dr. Tsung-Cheng Lin, Supervisor
Department of Pacific and Asian Studies
Dr. Daniel Bryant, Departmental Member
Department of Pacific and Asian Studies
Dr. Richard King, Departmental Member
Department of Pacific and Asian Studies
ABSTRACT
This thesis has two main objectives: to first discuss the defining characteristics of frontier
poetry (biansaishi 边 塞 诗 ) while showing how this subgenre of poetry blossomed during the Tang 唐
period prior to the An Lushan rebellion (anshizhiluan 安 史 之 乱 ), and then to focus on one Tang
frontier poet in particular, Cen Shen 岑 参 (715-770), for a sustained critical investigation into how the
poet-narrators of his texts focalize three types of frontier settings, namely landscapes of intense heat,
cold and vast distances. These two objectives necessitate dividing the thesis into a bipartite structure,
which is further subdivided into six chapters. Chapters one through three address the first objective of
the thesis, that of surveying frontier poetry as it pertains to the subgenre's flourishing during Tang
period. Chapters four through six endeavour to traverse Cen Shen's frontier settings with a critical eye
on uncovering patterns behind the manner in which the poet-narrators perceive China's borderland
regions, and to show how these patterns are repeated across disparate poems where the frontier setting
itself features prominently. The result of such an analysis is the realization of an underlying foundation
of focalization connecting the poet-narrators in each of Cen Shen's three major frontier environements.