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experience of having joined military campaigns in the far north-west. 102 Initially derided by later critics
as mere imitations of late Han Yuefu topics since the writers themselves lacked the credentials of having
served on the frontier, many Southern dynasty frontier poems have now come to be regarded as having
made an important contribution to the shape of High Tang frontier poetry by introducing fresh
characteristics into the subgenre. 103
41
During the Southern dynasty period, the poetic frontier landscape was very much the product of
the writer's imagination, an aesthetic world rarely derived from direct frontier experience yet still a
rendering of China's periphery which would later be regarded as having heavily influenced the images
and allusions used by writers of proceeding ages in creating the environmental terrain and atmosphere
of frontier poetry. 104 As “one of the most popular yuefu topics...the frontier...could be credibly evoked
by poets who would have fainted at the sight of a hostile Tartar 105 in the flesh. Border [frontier] poetry
was very much a literary experience, but it taught later poets who went on campaigns or into exile how
to 'see' that stark world”. 106 The perceptual content and ideological themes of frontier poetry were
constructed by many Southern dynasty poets' treatment of frontier related Yuefu topics where
borderland warfare, life and imagery, despite existing geographically well beyond the northern horizon
of the poets themselves, became established and woven into a network of desolate imagery and Han
dynasty historical allusions. 107
102 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 51.
103 Wang Yiyuan 王 宜 瑗 , “Liang Chen: Zhengzhan ticai de xinbian 梁 陈 : 征 战 题 材 的 新 变 ”Wenxue yichan 文 学 遗 产
No. 3 (2010), 34-41, especially pp. 34 and 37. Wang devotes the majority of her essay to discussing innovations made
during the Southern dynasty period to frontier poetry, in particular the fusion of poems on complaints of frontier service
(zhengyuan 征 怨 ) and boudoir laments (guiyuan 闺 怨 ) which generated poetic texts of homesickness in which the
sorrow of separation was simultaneously viewed from both the campaigning soldier's and the lonely wife's perspectives.
Wang also emphasizes how the Southern dynasty period established the use of allusions to historical events of the Han
dynasty as a filter for poems depicting frontier war. This immersion of Southern dynasty frontier poems in an
atmosphere of Han place names and personalities was a stylistic practice maintained into and throughout the High Tang.
104 Chen Bin 陈 斌 , “Hengchui qu yu nanchao biansai yuefu 横 吹 曲 与 南 朝 边 塞 乐 府 ”Gudian wenxue zhishi 古 典 文 学 知
识 2003.1, pp. 42-46, especially p. 42 and Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 143.
105 胡 人 (hu ren, non-Chinese person)
106 Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T'ang, pp.49-50
107 Hu Dajun 胡 大 浚 , “Biansai shi zhi hanyi yu tangdai biansai shi de fanrong 边 塞 诗 之 涵 义 与 唐 代 边 塞 诗 的 繁 荣 in
Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu lunwen xuancui 唐 代 边 塞 诗 研 究 论 文 选 粹 , p. 49.