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frontier poetry by writing poems that often blended the standards of conventional renderings with
personal experience and insight into living on the frontier. The result of such infusions was a more
complex body of frontier poetry that combined the reality of the frontier with established literary
practices of portraying the events, peoples and setting of the region. However, before detailing and
discussing such progress, the chapter opens with a summary of critical concerns with the “frontier
poetry” paradigm in categorizing both poetry and poets, and how such a classificatory scheme, while
offering a particular approach to understanding a body of poetry, can also limit readers' appreciation of
a poet's thematically diverse oeuvre when the poet himself becomes exclusively associated with one
subgenre.
Without these preceding chapters on the sub-generic features and development of frontier
poetry during the Tang dynasty, the more theoretical and specific concerns of part two would seem far
too removed from the poetic tradition within which the primary texts being explored exist. It was out of
respect for both the literary context visited in part two of the thesis, as well as a desire to become better
acquainted with the subgenre's heritage and principal themes, that these first three chapters were
written. If successful, part one of this thesis will also familiarize the reader with the main thematic
features of frontier poetry, especially that of frontier poetry during the High Tang period, and thus
preempt any confusion that might arise regarding the breadth of the subgenre when in part two one
specific feature is rigorously examined using an approach about which little has been written in either
English or Chinese language criticism.