Xiaojing Miao

Tang fu, which constitutes a significant part of the literary landscape of the Tang yet has been largely neglected in scholarship, is the subject of this proposed dissertation. In this dissertation, I intend to study how the literati, officials, and occasionally emperors during the first century and a half of the Tang understood fu; what role the fu played, especially in relation to politics; and most importantly, what the characteristics of fu were at the time, including its relationship with previous fu traditions and its particular developments through the mid-eighth century. Of course I expect that my ideas, as well as the precise organization of the dissertation, will necessarily develop and perhaps change in the course of my research.