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3.2. High Tang Frontier Poetry: Elements of Distinction
Having laid the thematic bedrock of frontier poetry with Xiao Chengyu's tripartite model, 22 one
of many possible means of classifying frontier poetry, the aim of the following portion of the thesis is
to outline how frontier poetry of the High Tang can be seen as deserving its place as the pinnacle of the
subgenre. To do so, a selection of frontier poems from the High Tang period 23 that display an
enhancement of the essential features of frontier poetry as arranged by Xiao will be discussed, the hope
being that a robust justification will be made for the praise commonly bestowed upon these works as
being the apogee of their subgenre. It should be noted that even though many examples of High Tang
frontier poetry were included earlier in the thesis when demarcating steams of pre-Tang influence on
the conceptualization of frontier poetry, this return here seeks to demonstrate even more clearly how
the High Tang brought frontier poetry to a new plateau.
3.2.1. An Array of Martial Responses
Beginning with the first of Xiao's taxonomic categories of frontier poetry – poems responding
to war on the frontier – High Tang frontier poems of this stream tend to display a degree of attitudinal
maturation and piercing perspective distinguished by the incorporation of a personal understanding of
the frontier situation. These responses were born of overt concerns for the defence of the nation during
a time of frequent border conflicts that were neither restricted to the quaint pining found in some war
themed poems of the Book of Songs nor indistinguishable from the imaginative frontier musings seen
during the Southern dynasty period. 24 Moreover, the scope of reflection was not limited to a seeming
22
Selected for this thesis mainly for its ability to delineate a broad spectrum of frontier poetry aspects without colliding too
often with the traffic of other subgenres.
23
A period “correspond[ing] largely to the reign of the famous Emperor Xuan Zong 玄 宗 (713-755)”. See Burton Watson,
Chinese Lyricism, p. 110.
24
Ng, Kam-lung, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 187. The implication being that the High Tang period balanced a
realistic rendering of the frontier (xieshixing 写 实 型 ) with earlier established practices of portraying the frontier in
poetry (wenhuaxing 文 化 型 ) by poets with little, or any, personal investment in the circumstances of China's border
regions yet who nonetheless had established the aesthetic vocabulary of the frontier subgenre upon which later poets
would expand.