Thomas Kelly (Harvard University)

Late Ming and early Qing authors, in addition to writing on paper with a brush and ink, engraved their words onto a range of decorative objects, from vessels and weapons to musical instruments and desktop tools. Working with a selection of artifacts from the seventeenth century, the talk considers how inscription (ming) came to constitute a form of literary thought uniquely attuned to the contingencies of writing’s embodiment and survival. The speaker explores the paradox that seventeenth-century authors, amid rampant commodification and the destruction of inter-dynastic war, confronted fears of being dominated by, or reduced to things, by writing upon the surfaces of objects.