ABSTRACT
To scholars of the present day the fu or “rhapsody” remains yet a rather neglected genre of Chinese poetry, even though it was of great importance to writers from the Han through the T’ang dynasties. Of course, rhapsodies are more difficult to read—far more difficult and time-consuming than the average shih. It is the rhapsody’s display of the full resources of the language, especially in the variety of fu that Knechtges has called the “epideictic rhapsody,” that makes it the broad background against which the tighter, more controlled forms of poetry must be considered. One of the most evident, exhilarating, and often—to the reader—troublesome possibilities exploited in the fu is the appearance in a single poem of a Corinthian profusion of synonyms, the value of which is dependent upon the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the different nuances, however slight they be, of those synonyms.
