Medieval Frontier Poetry, "Fiction," and the Problem of Chinese Identity

Description

Though frontier poetry (biansai shi 邊塞詩) represents a substantial and long-running archive of critical discussion regarding Chinese identity, the Chinese empire, and neighboring peoples, it has rarely been leveraged in histories of political thought. Among the reasons that might be cited for this neglect is the complexity of the form’s modes—the ways it overwrote the political present with historical precedents, literary conventions, and dramatic archetypes—the common “fictionality” of which has clashed with what many scholars have seen as the basic “non-fictionality” of the Chinese verse tradition. I will suggest, however, that these complex modes and voices represented less constraints on political thinking than tools deployed in its service. In particular, the partial opacity of medieval frontier poetry to its historical occasions often reflects and reflects on what it depicts as the inherently problematic concept of Chinese identity.

Speaker

Lucas Rambo Bender is Associate Professor on Term at Yale University. He is the author of Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics Amid Societal Collapse, and is currently at work on two book manuscripts, one on the history of Chinese frontier poetry and the other on middle period "Xuanxue" ("Dark Learning").