| Chapter : | Introduction |
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one hand, the imperial grand map representing the entire known world afforded writers fresh perspectives with which they could imagine the cosmos and the empire in exciting new ways. On the other hand, the literary texts also speak back to these maps, highlighting the social, cultural, and aesthetic features that are integral dimensions of Jia’s map but could not be expressed directly, explicitly, or fully on the map itself.
My analysis begins with a brief discussion of the high-Tang poet Du Fu’s poem “At a Banquet Lord Yan Held in His Hall, We All Composed Poems on a Painting of the Cliff-Paths of Sichuan, and I Was Assigned the Rhyme Word ‘Kong’” (“Yangong tingyan tongyong shudao huatu de kongzi” 嚴公廳宴同詠蜀道畫圖得空字). Although the poem was produced before the mid-Tang period and the map was merely a regional map, in this poem I will identify some general patterns of map-reading poetry that will reoccur in its mid-Tang successors. I then move on to analyze works by three mid-Tang writers, Li He, Liu Zongyuan and the slightly later poet Zhang Hu 張祜 (792–853), in relation to the advancements in cartographical skills in the same era. I will analyze Li He’s poem “Dream Heaven” in light of some cartographical effects brought to the fore by Jia Dan’s map, such as its cosmic scope and historical depth, and propose to read the poem as one that mimics a map-reading experience. I will then discuss several of Liu Zongyuan’s poems and one of his landscape essays, “Record of an Excursion to Huang Creek” (“You Huangxi ji” 遊黃溪記), all written during his demotion in the south. I argue that Liu’s creative engagement with cartographical objects, terms, and perspectives not only brings the spatial imageries in his writing added delicacy and precision, but also facilitates his political negotiation with the central court from a peripheral perspective. Finally, I will turn to two poems about “Maps of Mountains and Seas” by Zhang Hu. I explore how in his work the poet imposed a grand map view onto the ancient map-pictures and argue that the painterly nature of Jia’s grand map was key to Zhang’s poetic innovation. All these examples signify the magnitude of the literati’s large-scale spatial imagination