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Part One: Overview of Tang Frontier Poetry
Chapter Three: High Tang Accomplishments in Frontier Poetry
3.1. Frontier Poetry: A Subgenre Challenged
The thematic streams flowing through Tang frontier poetry as traced by Xiao Chengyu 1 were
shown to have their origins in a disparate array of literature which individually may not always be
classified as frontier poetry – a select number of war-themed poems from The Book of Songs being but
one example – but which nonetheless exerted an influence on the formation of the subgenre. Having
already presented a brief overview of a selected number of pre-Tang works that anticipate defining
traits found in Tang frontier poetry, what will now follow is an introduction to the distinguishing
features of Tang frontier poetry, particularly that of the High Tang as that is the period where the
following chapters of this thesis will mainly focus. However, before expounding upon those
characteristics, a short pause will be made to acknowledge the problematic nature of the very term
“frontier poetry” as it pertains to the Tang period, a categorical designation that is not without its own
critics. Thus, before reengaging High Tang frontier poetic texts, a summation of two key critical works
discussing certain insecurities surrounding the stability of the subgenre itself will be made as evidence
of the subgenre's own relativity and openness to mutability.
Hu Dajun's “The Meaning of Frontier Poetry and The Flourishing of Tang Frontier Poetry” 2 is
one such essay. In answering the question “what is frontier poetry”, Hu begins with what he regards as
1
For whom responses to the phenomenon of frontier war, encounters and observations of non-Chinese frontier peoples
and customs, and depictions of northern borderland environments form the tripartite body within which the thematic
blood of frontier poetry flows.
2
Hu Dajun 胡 大 浚 , “Biansaishi zhi hanyi yu tangdaibiansaishi de fanrong” 边 塞 诗 之 涵 义 与 唐 代 边 塞 诗 的 繁 荣 .