Abstract
Though poets had always been preoccupied by things, according to literary tradition it was only from the Han onward that yongwu fu 詠物賦 (literally, “fu celebrating things”) were written in large numbers. These poems have been largely neglected or dismissed, however, while problems of dating and authorial attribution confound attempts to write a neat history of the fu in the Eastern Han. Though scholars may not be able to say for sure who wrote these poems, or when, they do have the poems themselves, a diverse corpus exhibiting a wide-ranging interest in different things. This article will focus on those pieces dedicated to man-made artifacts: fans, tables, musical instruments, and the like. The goal is to understand what things were doing for these poets and how they functioned as part of poetic discourse. The poets responsible for these pieces drew on material culture not just as a way of showing off their literary talents but as ways of engaging in profound reflections on a range of important topics, including the interconnectedness of things in the world, the relationships between things and people, and the roles things were supposed to play in the successful execution of a person's sociopolitical duties.
