Vasiliki M. Limberis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199730889
- eISBN:
- 9780199895229
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730889.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This book examines the cult of the martyrs in the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. Chapter 1 analyzes the complex rituals of the ...
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This book examines the cult of the martyrs in the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. Chapter 1 analyzes the complex rituals of the panegyris, the martyr festival, as a transformative event by which the faithful experience the martyr’s holiness. How they employ the martyrs in preaching, in organizational protocols, in Scriptural exegesis, and in their call to Christian morality all show their own profound devotion to martyr piety and their evangelical zeal in promoting the cult of the martyrs. Chapter 2 examines the Cappadocians’ deployment of rhetorical description, ekphrasis, to advance the cult of the martyrs ritually, spiritually, and materially. Gregory of Nyssa’s ekphrasis for St. Theodore incited the faithful to participate in ritual transformation. Such materiality is brought to bear in Nyssen’s other ekphrasis describing difficulties in building a martyrium. The chapter compares Nyssen’s martyrium to the extant ruins of the martyrium of St. Philip in Hierapolis, giving an imaginative glimpse at the spectacular structures the Cappadocians funded. Chapter 3 introduces the Cappadocians and their families through a discussion of the ways kinship occurred in fourth-century Cappadocia: marriage and birth, monasticism, and martyr piety. Kinship obligations provided the means for the Cappadocians to successfully claim certain martyrs as their ancestral kin and to turn some of their family members into martyrs within a few years of their deaths. Chapter 4 deals with the Cappadocians’ utilization, manipulation, and preaching about both genders in their martyr panegyrics that contrasts sharply with their articulation of gender in their family panegyrics.Less
This book examines the cult of the martyrs in the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. Chapter 1 analyzes the complex rituals of the panegyris, the martyr festival, as a transformative event by which the faithful experience the martyr’s holiness. How they employ the martyrs in preaching, in organizational protocols, in Scriptural exegesis, and in their call to Christian morality all show their own profound devotion to martyr piety and their evangelical zeal in promoting the cult of the martyrs. Chapter 2 examines the Cappadocians’ deployment of rhetorical description, ekphrasis, to advance the cult of the martyrs ritually, spiritually, and materially. Gregory of Nyssa’s ekphrasis for St. Theodore incited the faithful to participate in ritual transformation. Such materiality is brought to bear in Nyssen’s other ekphrasis describing difficulties in building a martyrium. The chapter compares Nyssen’s martyrium to the extant ruins of the martyrium of St. Philip in Hierapolis, giving an imaginative glimpse at the spectacular structures the Cappadocians funded. Chapter 3 introduces the Cappadocians and their families through a discussion of the ways kinship occurred in fourth-century Cappadocia: marriage and birth, monasticism, and martyr piety. Kinship obligations provided the means for the Cappadocians to successfully claim certain martyrs as their ancestral kin and to turn some of their family members into martyrs within a few years of their deaths. Chapter 4 deals with the Cappadocians’ utilization, manipulation, and preaching about both genders in their martyr panegyrics that contrasts sharply with their articulation of gender in their family panegyrics.
Mary Carruthers
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197265048
- eISBN:
- 9780191754159
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265048.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
Imagining structures from the ekphrastic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Temple Mount in I Kings and Ezekiel is an ancient meditation discipline, which was adopted from Jewish practices into ...
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Imagining structures from the ekphrastic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Temple Mount in I Kings and Ezekiel is an ancient meditation discipline, which was adopted from Jewish practices into early Christian monasticism. Though it could take various forms, ‘imagining/remembering Jerusalem’ was often practised as a devotional exercise throughout the European Middle Ages. Drawings of such an imagined character are significant to late medieval exegesis of these and related scriptural materials, particularly those associated with the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra and the collection of visual meditations known as the Speculum theologie. This chapter queries a late medieval illuminated manuscript (Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156) that, in the fifteenth century, formed part of the library of St John's Hospital in Exeter, to suggest that its materials were acquired and used for scriptural study and sermon composition by scholars of the hospital and its associated school.Less
Imagining structures from the ekphrastic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Temple Mount in I Kings and Ezekiel is an ancient meditation discipline, which was adopted from Jewish practices into early Christian monasticism. Though it could take various forms, ‘imagining/remembering Jerusalem’ was often practised as a devotional exercise throughout the European Middle Ages. Drawings of such an imagined character are significant to late medieval exegesis of these and related scriptural materials, particularly those associated with the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra and the collection of visual meditations known as the Speculum theologie. This chapter queries a late medieval illuminated manuscript (Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156) that, in the fifteenth century, formed part of the library of St John's Hospital in Exeter, to suggest that its materials were acquired and used for scriptural study and sermon composition by scholars of the hospital and its associated school.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter discusses the taxonomy of imaginary literary works (supplementing the taxonomy of fictionalized life‐writings proposed in Chapter 5), and their scarcity during the nineteenth century. It ...
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This chapter discusses the taxonomy of imaginary literary works (supplementing the taxonomy of fictionalized life‐writings proposed in Chapter 5), and their scarcity during the nineteenth century. It concludes the discussion of Joyce, and ends with an account of Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as an indisputable example of a fictionally authored auto/biography.Less
This chapter discusses the taxonomy of imaginary literary works (supplementing the taxonomy of fictionalized life‐writings proposed in Chapter 5), and their scarcity during the nineteenth century. It concludes the discussion of Joyce, and ends with an account of Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as an indisputable example of a fictionally authored auto/biography.
Henry Maguire
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199766604
- eISBN:
- 9780199950386
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, History of Art: pre-history, BCE to 500CE, ancient and classical, Byzantine
This book presents a study of the portrayal of nature in Byzantine art and literature. It shows how the Byzantines embraced terrestrial creation in the decoration of their churches during the fifth ...
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This book presents a study of the portrayal of nature in Byzantine art and literature. It shows how the Byzantines embraced terrestrial creation in the decoration of their churches during the fifth to seventh centuries, but then adopted a more cautious attitude toward the depiction of animals and plants in the middle ages, after the iconoclastic dispute of the eighth and ninth centuries. The book discusses the role of iconoclasm in affecting this fundamental change in Byzantine art. An important theme is the asymmetrical relationship between Byzantine art and literature with respect to the portrayal of nature. A series of vivid ekphraseis described seasons, landscapes, gardens (including those of paradise), animals and plants, but these were more sparingly illustrated in medieval art. Likewise, in Byzantine church literature a rich variety of nature-derived metaphors evoked the Virgin Mary, but these images were less frequently incorporated into art, and often in ways that would express the subordination of the terrestrial to the spiritual. The book concludes with a discussion of the abstraction of nature in the form of marble floors and revetments, where the variegated colors of the marbles contrasted with the golden pallor of the sacred icons, and with a consideration of the role of architectural backgrounds in medieval Byzantine art, which acted as a substitute symbolic language unassociated with the veneration of creation. Throughout the book, medieval Byzantine art is compared with that of Western Europe, where different conceptions of religious imagery allowed a closer engagement with nature.Less
This book presents a study of the portrayal of nature in Byzantine art and literature. It shows how the Byzantines embraced terrestrial creation in the decoration of their churches during the fifth to seventh centuries, but then adopted a more cautious attitude toward the depiction of animals and plants in the middle ages, after the iconoclastic dispute of the eighth and ninth centuries. The book discusses the role of iconoclasm in affecting this fundamental change in Byzantine art. An important theme is the asymmetrical relationship between Byzantine art and literature with respect to the portrayal of nature. A series of vivid ekphraseis described seasons, landscapes, gardens (including those of paradise), animals and plants, but these were more sparingly illustrated in medieval art. Likewise, in Byzantine church literature a rich variety of nature-derived metaphors evoked the Virgin Mary, but these images were less frequently incorporated into art, and often in ways that would express the subordination of the terrestrial to the spiritual. The book concludes with a discussion of the abstraction of nature in the form of marble floors and revetments, where the variegated colors of the marbles contrasted with the golden pallor of the sacred icons, and with a consideration of the role of architectural backgrounds in medieval Byzantine art, which acted as a substitute symbolic language unassociated with the veneration of creation. Throughout the book, medieval Byzantine art is compared with that of Western Europe, where different conceptions of religious imagery allowed a closer engagement with nature.
David Kennedy and Richard Meek (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. In the past twenty five years numerous books and articles have appeared covering different aspects ...
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This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. In the past twenty five years numerous books and articles have appeared covering different aspects of ekphrasis, with scholars arguing that it is a fundamental means by which literary artists have explored the nature of aesthetic experience. However many critics continue to rely upon the traditional conception of ekphrasis as a form of paragone (competition) between word and image. This interdisciplinary collection seeks to complicate this critical paradigm, and proposes a more reciprocal model of ekphrasis that involves an encounter or exchange between visual and textual cultures. This critical and theoretical shift demands a new form of ekphrastic poetics, which is less concerned with representational and institutional struggles, and more concerned with ideas of ethics, affect, and intersubjectivity. The book brings together leading scholars working in the fields of literary studies, art history, modern languages, and comparative literature, and offers a fresh exploration of ekphrastic texts from the Renaissance to the present day. The chapters in the book are critically and methodologically wide-ranging; yet they share an interest in challenging the paragonal model of ekphrasis that has been prevalent since the early 1990s, and establishing a new set of theoretical frameworks for exploring the ekphrastic encounter.Less
This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. In the past twenty five years numerous books and articles have appeared covering different aspects of ekphrasis, with scholars arguing that it is a fundamental means by which literary artists have explored the nature of aesthetic experience. However many critics continue to rely upon the traditional conception of ekphrasis as a form of paragone (competition) between word and image. This interdisciplinary collection seeks to complicate this critical paradigm, and proposes a more reciprocal model of ekphrasis that involves an encounter or exchange between visual and textual cultures. This critical and theoretical shift demands a new form of ekphrastic poetics, which is less concerned with representational and institutional struggles, and more concerned with ideas of ethics, affect, and intersubjectivity. The book brings together leading scholars working in the fields of literary studies, art history, modern languages, and comparative literature, and offers a fresh exploration of ekphrastic texts from the Renaissance to the present day. The chapters in the book are critically and methodologically wide-ranging; yet they share an interest in challenging the paragonal model of ekphrasis that has been prevalent since the early 1990s, and establishing a new set of theoretical frameworks for exploring the ekphrastic encounter.
Vasiliki M. Limberis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199730889
- eISBN:
- 9780199895229
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730889.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter explores the Cappadocians’ deployment of ekphrasis as it appears in panegyrics to the martyrs and in other letters connected in some way to the cult of the martyrs. The analysis of ...
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This chapter explores the Cappadocians’ deployment of ekphrasis as it appears in panegyrics to the martyrs and in other letters connected in some way to the cult of the martyrs. The analysis of Gregory of Nyssa’s powerful use of ekphrasis of the artwork in the martyrium of St. Theodore of Euchaïta shows how astutely he prepares the faithful for physical and spiritual redirection through ritual acts at the martyr shrine. The second part links the role of ekphrasis to the two structures built by the Cappadocians: the church built by Gregory of Nazianzus’ father, and the martyrium built by Gregory of Nyssa. Finally, the chapter compares and contrasts Nyssen’s martyrium with the archeological reconstruction of St. Philip’s martyrium in Hierapolis, built in the late-fourth century, thus providing a tangible entrance into the vibrant network of Cappadocian martyria, no longer extant.Less
This chapter explores the Cappadocians’ deployment of ekphrasis as it appears in panegyrics to the martyrs and in other letters connected in some way to the cult of the martyrs. The analysis of Gregory of Nyssa’s powerful use of ekphrasis of the artwork in the martyrium of St. Theodore of Euchaïta shows how astutely he prepares the faithful for physical and spiritual redirection through ritual acts at the martyr shrine. The second part links the role of ekphrasis to the two structures built by the Cappadocians: the church built by Gregory of Nazianzus’ father, and the martyrium built by Gregory of Nyssa. Finally, the chapter compares and contrasts Nyssen’s martyrium with the archeological reconstruction of St. Philip’s martyrium in Hierapolis, built in the late-fourth century, thus providing a tangible entrance into the vibrant network of Cappadocian martyria, no longer extant.
Rachel Eisendrath
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226516585
- eISBN:
- 9780226516752
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226516752.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and ...
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We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as “things in themselves”—things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance “discovery” of the observable world. This book explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a form that resisted this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted artful descriptions that provided a home for the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This book reclaims subjectivity as an irreplaceable way of grasping the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.Less
We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as “things in themselves”—things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance “discovery” of the observable world. This book explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a form that resisted this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted artful descriptions that provided a home for the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This book reclaims subjectivity as an irreplaceable way of grasping the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.
Raymond Geuss
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195332926
- eISBN:
- 9780199851294
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332926.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Ekphrasis is generally taken as a “verbal representation of visual representation.” The theory and practical criticism of ekphrasis have been expanded recently by the work of James Heffernan, John ...
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Ekphrasis is generally taken as a “verbal representation of visual representation.” The theory and practical criticism of ekphrasis have been expanded recently by the work of James Heffernan, John Hollander, W. J. T. Mitchell, Grant Scott, and others. Thus, this chapter is limited to three subgenres of ekphrasis that have been more or less scanted by these critics. First, Recoveries, a book-length dramatic monologue by Theodore Weiss whose speaker is a figure in a painting; second, Irving Feldman's title sequence from his 1986 collection All of Us Here, about a show of George Segal plaster-cast sculptures; and last, a sampling of the very few ekphrastic poems about Abstract Expressionist or nonrepresentational painting made by American poets in the past 50 years. In all three cases, visual art promises what Weiss calls “a space for boundless revery,” which has tempted all ekphrastic poets since Homer to dream of, through, or within the confines of a visible or imaginary material depiction.Less
Ekphrasis is generally taken as a “verbal representation of visual representation.” The theory and practical criticism of ekphrasis have been expanded recently by the work of James Heffernan, John Hollander, W. J. T. Mitchell, Grant Scott, and others. Thus, this chapter is limited to three subgenres of ekphrasis that have been more or less scanted by these critics. First, Recoveries, a book-length dramatic monologue by Theodore Weiss whose speaker is a figure in a painting; second, Irving Feldman's title sequence from his 1986 collection All of Us Here, about a show of George Segal plaster-cast sculptures; and last, a sampling of the very few ekphrastic poems about Abstract Expressionist or nonrepresentational painting made by American poets in the past 50 years. In all three cases, visual art promises what Weiss calls “a space for boundless revery,” which has tempted all ekphrastic poets since Homer to dream of, through, or within the confines of a visible or imaginary material depiction.
Andrew Miller
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381908
- eISBN:
- 9781781382356
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381908.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Poetry, Photography, Ekphrasis is a detailed study of the ekphrasis of photography in poetry since the 19th century. Unlike other critical studies of ekphrasis, Miller’s study concentrates solely on ...
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Poetry, Photography, Ekphrasis is a detailed study of the ekphrasis of photography in poetry since the 19th century. Unlike other critical studies of ekphrasis, Miller’s study concentrates solely on the lyrical ekphrasis of photographs, setting out to define how the photographic image provides a unique form of poetic ekphrasis. Moving between the disciplines of semiotics, visual studies, psychology, classical rhetoric, philosophy and literary criticism, Miller outlines what he defines as the chronotope of the photograph. Employing M.M. Bakhtin’s notion of the literary chronotope, Miller argues that the ekphrasis of photographs manifests itself in a series of chronotopic narratives. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to delineating one of these narratives. In this work, Miller engages in a literary history that follows the timeline of photography from its origins in the 19th century to its contemporary digital manifestations in the 21st. The study engages in close-readings of the works of such poets as Walt Whitman, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Marianne Moore and Philip Larkin. In addition, the book does the work of a comparative study, and it goes beyond the limits of Anglophone literature to include the works of such poets and writers as Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal and Zbigniew Herbert.Less
Poetry, Photography, Ekphrasis is a detailed study of the ekphrasis of photography in poetry since the 19th century. Unlike other critical studies of ekphrasis, Miller’s study concentrates solely on the lyrical ekphrasis of photographs, setting out to define how the photographic image provides a unique form of poetic ekphrasis. Moving between the disciplines of semiotics, visual studies, psychology, classical rhetoric, philosophy and literary criticism, Miller outlines what he defines as the chronotope of the photograph. Employing M.M. Bakhtin’s notion of the literary chronotope, Miller argues that the ekphrasis of photographs manifests itself in a series of chronotopic narratives. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to delineating one of these narratives. In this work, Miller engages in a literary history that follows the timeline of photography from its origins in the 19th century to its contemporary digital manifestations in the 21st. The study engages in close-readings of the works of such poets as Walt Whitman, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Marianne Moore and Philip Larkin. In addition, the book does the work of a comparative study, and it goes beyond the limits of Anglophone literature to include the works of such poets and writers as Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal and Zbigniew Herbert.
John O’brien
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226291123
- eISBN:
- 9780226291260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226291260.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
The Panic of 1837 was the financial crisis that set the pattern for such paroxysms of instability in the financial system ever since. This chapter explores the importance of the figure of the bank in ...
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The Panic of 1837 was the financial crisis that set the pattern for such paroxysms of instability in the financial system ever since. This chapter explores the importance of the figure of the bank in the years that followed the Panic, particularly as it was deployed in works of fiction by Harriet Martineau, Robert Morris, and Edgar Allan Poe. Such works share a key rhetorical feature with the writings of economists in that they deploy the figure known as ekphrasis, the “speaking picture,” invoking images to mark the place where narration fails to convey the full complexity of their text’s meaning. The chapter ends with a reading of Poe’s “The Gold Bug” as incorporating a screen memory of the labor and violence that subtended the global economic system.Less
The Panic of 1837 was the financial crisis that set the pattern for such paroxysms of instability in the financial system ever since. This chapter explores the importance of the figure of the bank in the years that followed the Panic, particularly as it was deployed in works of fiction by Harriet Martineau, Robert Morris, and Edgar Allan Poe. Such works share a key rhetorical feature with the writings of economists in that they deploy the figure known as ekphrasis, the “speaking picture,” invoking images to mark the place where narration fails to convey the full complexity of their text’s meaning. The chapter ends with a reading of Poe’s “The Gold Bug” as incorporating a screen memory of the labor and violence that subtended the global economic system.
Andrew D. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381908
- eISBN:
- 9781781382356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381908.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The chapter addresses the primary aspects of the ekphrasis of photographs. Using Mikhail Bahktin’s theory of the chronotope of the novel, the chapter defines what it terms “the chronotope of the ...
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The chapter addresses the primary aspects of the ekphrasis of photographs. Using Mikhail Bahktin’s theory of the chronotope of the novel, the chapter defines what it terms “the chronotope of the photograph”, describing this as a narrative space that occurs between a photographic image and a poetic speaker. The primary example is taken from Walter Benjamin’s essay “A Brief History of Photography”.Less
The chapter addresses the primary aspects of the ekphrasis of photographs. Using Mikhail Bahktin’s theory of the chronotope of the novel, the chapter defines what it terms “the chronotope of the photograph”, describing this as a narrative space that occurs between a photographic image and a poetic speaker. The primary example is taken from Walter Benjamin’s essay “A Brief History of Photography”.
Jeanne Fahnestock
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199764129
- eISBN:
- 9780199918928
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764129.003.0016
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy
In everyday conversation, speakers and hearers inhabit specific places and times. Languages include deictic terms to refer to these givens of the physical situation. Speakers can choose to refer ...
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In everyday conversation, speakers and hearers inhabit specific places and times. Languages include deictic terms to refer to these givens of the physical situation. Speakers can choose to refer explicitly to their immediate location and moment, and in fact politicians typically do, even to the point of arranging to give a speech in a location that they can strategically reference. Though written texts seem to transcend the particulars of time and place, writers in some circumstances can use immediate deixis. But more often writers, and even speakers, can construct absent or hypothetical places and times through imaginary deixis. The result is the set description, recommended in rhetorical exercises since antiquity (as descriptio, ekphrasis, etc.). Time and place can also be invoked in broader senses. For example, the time referenced or constructed in an argument can ignore a particular hour or date and focus instead on time in the sense of an occasion, a kairotic moment that the arguer seizes on, such as an anniversary or a “first time.” Campbell in the eighteenth and Chilton in the twenty-first century note the argumentative potential in constructions of time and place, and Bitzer labeled these aspects of the rhetorical situation, calling special attention to the exigence, the immediate need for rhetorical discourse. To Burke, time and place were elements of the arguer's scene whose circumference was malleable. The number of critical terms in rhetoric covering notions of time and place shows the importance of this dimension of speaker/audience interaction.Less
In everyday conversation, speakers and hearers inhabit specific places and times. Languages include deictic terms to refer to these givens of the physical situation. Speakers can choose to refer explicitly to their immediate location and moment, and in fact politicians typically do, even to the point of arranging to give a speech in a location that they can strategically reference. Though written texts seem to transcend the particulars of time and place, writers in some circumstances can use immediate deixis. But more often writers, and even speakers, can construct absent or hypothetical places and times through imaginary deixis. The result is the set description, recommended in rhetorical exercises since antiquity (as descriptio, ekphrasis, etc.). Time and place can also be invoked in broader senses. For example, the time referenced or constructed in an argument can ignore a particular hour or date and focus instead on time in the sense of an occasion, a kairotic moment that the arguer seizes on, such as an anniversary or a “first time.” Campbell in the eighteenth and Chilton in the twenty-first century note the argumentative potential in constructions of time and place, and Bitzer labeled these aspects of the rhetorical situation, calling special attention to the exigence, the immediate need for rhetorical discourse. To Burke, time and place were elements of the arguer's scene whose circumference was malleable. The number of critical terms in rhetoric covering notions of time and place shows the importance of this dimension of speaker/audience interaction.
Karin Schlapbach
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198807728
- eISBN:
- 9780191845543
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198807728.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, History of Art: pre-history, BCE to 500CE, ancient and classical, Byzantine
This book makes an original contribution to the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies. It offers a better grasp of ancient perceptions and conceptualizations ...
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This book makes an original contribution to the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies. It offers a better grasp of ancient perceptions and conceptualizations of dance through the lens of literary texts. It gives attention not only to the highly encoded genre of pantomime, which dominates the stages in the Roman Empire, but also to acrobatic, non-representational dances. It is distinctive in its juxtaposition of ancient theorizations of dance with literary depictions of dance scenes. Part I explores the contact zones of ancient dance discourse with other areas of cultural expression, especially language and poetry, rhetoric and art, and philosophy and religion. Part II discusses ekphraseis of dance performances in prose and poetry. The main bulk of the book focuses roughly on the second century CE (discussing Plutarch, Lucian of Samosata, Athenaeus, the apocryphal Acts of John, Longus, and Apuleius), with excursions to Xenophon and Nonnus. Dance is performative and dynamic, and its way to cognition and action is physical experience. This book argues that dance was understood as a practice in which human beings, whether as dancers or spectators, are confronted with the irreducible reality of their own physical existence, which is constantly changing.Less
This book makes an original contribution to the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies. It offers a better grasp of ancient perceptions and conceptualizations of dance through the lens of literary texts. It gives attention not only to the highly encoded genre of pantomime, which dominates the stages in the Roman Empire, but also to acrobatic, non-representational dances. It is distinctive in its juxtaposition of ancient theorizations of dance with literary depictions of dance scenes. Part I explores the contact zones of ancient dance discourse with other areas of cultural expression, especially language and poetry, rhetoric and art, and philosophy and religion. Part II discusses ekphraseis of dance performances in prose and poetry. The main bulk of the book focuses roughly on the second century CE (discussing Plutarch, Lucian of Samosata, Athenaeus, the apocryphal Acts of John, Longus, and Apuleius), with excursions to Xenophon and Nonnus. Dance is performative and dynamic, and its way to cognition and action is physical experience. This book argues that dance was understood as a practice in which human beings, whether as dancers or spectators, are confronted with the irreducible reality of their own physical existence, which is constantly changing.
David Kennedy and Richard Meek (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Ekphrasis – the verbal representation of visual art – has traditionally been regarded as a form of paragone or competition between different forms of representation. The Introduction advocates a more ...
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Ekphrasis – the verbal representation of visual art – has traditionally been regarded as a form of paragone or competition between different forms of representation. The Introduction advocates a more reciprocal model of ekphrasis that involves an encounter or exchange between word and image. It outlines the ways in which the paragone has dominated critical conceptions of intermedial relationships. Ekphrastic works of various periods and styles have been read through the paradigm of the paragone that was established in the Renaissance; and yet this was not the only model available during that period. It is argued that the agonistic model was the primary means of conceptualising ekphrasis during the first ‘ekphrastic turn’ of the 1990s, and that this model has continued to be influential into the twenty-first century. However recent critics and theorists working across various disciplines and periods have started to interrogate this influential paradigm.Less
Ekphrasis – the verbal representation of visual art – has traditionally been regarded as a form of paragone or competition between different forms of representation. The Introduction advocates a more reciprocal model of ekphrasis that involves an encounter or exchange between word and image. It outlines the ways in which the paragone has dominated critical conceptions of intermedial relationships. Ekphrastic works of various periods and styles have been read through the paradigm of the paragone that was established in the Renaissance; and yet this was not the only model available during that period. It is argued that the agonistic model was the primary means of conceptualising ekphrasis during the first ‘ekphrastic turn’ of the 1990s, and that this model has continued to be influential into the twenty-first century. However recent critics and theorists working across various disciplines and periods have started to interrogate this influential paradigm.
Rachel Eisendrath (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In his 1594 narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare uses ekphrasis to explore a shift in the early modern understanding of history. Of the many changes he made to the Lucrece story, he added ...
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In his 1594 narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare uses ekphrasis to explore a shift in the early modern understanding of history. Of the many changes he made to the Lucrece story, he added a 200-line ekphrasis of a picture depicting the fall of Troy. While appearing at first glance to celebrate the idea of an illusionistic experience that makes the past seem fully alive, Shakespeare’s ekphrasis draws our attention to the fragmented things that supposedly evoke this fantasy – the ‘thousand lamentable objects’. In so doing, Shakespeare explores a new notion of history that is built from material fragments. These fragments are silent, but in a manner that is paradoxically expressive. In Shakespeare’s ekphrasis, Lucrece relates to the image of Hecuba not despite its brokenness and objectness, but rather because of them. The poem in this way constructs an early modern encounter where broken subject meets broken object.Less
In his 1594 narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare uses ekphrasis to explore a shift in the early modern understanding of history. Of the many changes he made to the Lucrece story, he added a 200-line ekphrasis of a picture depicting the fall of Troy. While appearing at first glance to celebrate the idea of an illusionistic experience that makes the past seem fully alive, Shakespeare’s ekphrasis draws our attention to the fragmented things that supposedly evoke this fantasy – the ‘thousand lamentable objects’. In so doing, Shakespeare explores a new notion of history that is built from material fragments. These fragments are silent, but in a manner that is paradoxically expressive. In Shakespeare’s ekphrasis, Lucrece relates to the image of Hecuba not despite its brokenness and objectness, but rather because of them. The poem in this way constructs an early modern encounter where broken subject meets broken object.
Richard Meek (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the figure of ekphrasis in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and focuses on the so-called ‘Painter scene’ that appears in the 1602 quarto. This is the most obviously ekphrastic ...
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This chapter examines the figure of ekphrasis in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and focuses on the so-called ‘Painter scene’ that appears in the 1602 quarto. This is the most obviously ekphrastic moment in the play, in which its protagonist, Hieronimo, encounters a Painter and commissions a visual artwork based on his plight. Critics of the play have tended to rely upon the traditional conception of ekphrasis as paragone, and argue that the representational contest implicit in this scene ultimately demonstrates the superiority of drama. By contrast, this chapter seeks to question the paragonal model of ekphrasis, and argues that The Spanish Tragedy highlights drama’s interdependence with, rather than superiority to, other forms of representation. The chapter also suggests that the play’s interest in ekphrasis opens up larger questions about borrowing, imitation, and collaboration. The Spanish Tragedy highlights the illusionistic aspects of theatrical representation, and its reliance upon a cunning juxtaposition of various forms of ‘counterfeit’ art.Less
This chapter examines the figure of ekphrasis in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and focuses on the so-called ‘Painter scene’ that appears in the 1602 quarto. This is the most obviously ekphrastic moment in the play, in which its protagonist, Hieronimo, encounters a Painter and commissions a visual artwork based on his plight. Critics of the play have tended to rely upon the traditional conception of ekphrasis as paragone, and argue that the representational contest implicit in this scene ultimately demonstrates the superiority of drama. By contrast, this chapter seeks to question the paragonal model of ekphrasis, and argues that The Spanish Tragedy highlights drama’s interdependence with, rather than superiority to, other forms of representation. The chapter also suggests that the play’s interest in ekphrasis opens up larger questions about borrowing, imitation, and collaboration. The Spanish Tragedy highlights the illusionistic aspects of theatrical representation, and its reliance upon a cunning juxtaposition of various forms of ‘counterfeit’ art.
Keith McDonald (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Andrew Marvell is becoming increasingly recognised as a poet who demonstrates a profound connection with the full range of visual arts. However, little attention has been paid to how the remarkable ...
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Andrew Marvell is becoming increasingly recognised as a poet who demonstrates a profound connection with the full range of visual arts. However, little attention has been paid to how the remarkable visual quality of Marvell’s work engages with traditional or contemporary debates about ekphrasis. This may seem surprising, as poems like ‘The Gallery’ tempt us into the sort of paragonal opposition between text and image that has become a central characteristic of ekphrastic critical orthodoxy. But Marvell’s work is well-suited to revisionist debates that look beyond these binary divisions. Two barely known Latin poems that accompany an unusual portrait of Oliver Cromwell to the Queen of Sweden demonstrate ekphrasis as prosopopoeia, exposing boundaries of language and culture in both visual and verbal modes. When Marvell’s fascination with how lives are represented combines with glass and reflection, we embark upon his ekphrastic encounter: of specific visual and temporal moments that define human mortality.Less
Andrew Marvell is becoming increasingly recognised as a poet who demonstrates a profound connection with the full range of visual arts. However, little attention has been paid to how the remarkable visual quality of Marvell’s work engages with traditional or contemporary debates about ekphrasis. This may seem surprising, as poems like ‘The Gallery’ tempt us into the sort of paragonal opposition between text and image that has become a central characteristic of ekphrastic critical orthodoxy. But Marvell’s work is well-suited to revisionist debates that look beyond these binary divisions. Two barely known Latin poems that accompany an unusual portrait of Oliver Cromwell to the Queen of Sweden demonstrate ekphrasis as prosopopoeia, exposing boundaries of language and culture in both visual and verbal modes. When Marvell’s fascination with how lives are represented combines with glass and reflection, we embark upon his ekphrastic encounter: of specific visual and temporal moments that define human mortality.
Jason Lawrence (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers Jonathan Richardson’s critical ‘Dissertation’ on Poussin’s painting Tancred and Erminia (c. 1633) as both analysis and ekphrastic representation. It focuses on Richardson’s ...
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This chapter considers Jonathan Richardson’s critical ‘Dissertation’ on Poussin’s painting Tancred and Erminia (c. 1633) as both analysis and ekphrastic representation. It focuses on Richardson’s keen interest in the artist’s visual interpretations of, and additions to, Tasso’s great Italian epic poem, Gerusalemme liberata (1581). It becomes clear that both the French painter and the English critic know the Italian poem well; it is far less certain, however, whether the intended English readership would have shared similar first-hand knowledge of either the picture or its literary source. Richardson’s paragone of the two forms is intended to emphasise Poussin’s ability ‘to make use of the Advantages This Art has over that of his Competitor’; problematically, however, the pre-eminence of the visual medium in this specific example can only be attested to by means of a sustained verbal comparison of the painting and its poetic source, which ultimately seems to imply a more complex, symbiotic relationship in the encounter between the visual and literary arts than Richardson initially admits.Less
This chapter considers Jonathan Richardson’s critical ‘Dissertation’ on Poussin’s painting Tancred and Erminia (c. 1633) as both analysis and ekphrastic representation. It focuses on Richardson’s keen interest in the artist’s visual interpretations of, and additions to, Tasso’s great Italian epic poem, Gerusalemme liberata (1581). It becomes clear that both the French painter and the English critic know the Italian poem well; it is far less certain, however, whether the intended English readership would have shared similar first-hand knowledge of either the picture or its literary source. Richardson’s paragone of the two forms is intended to emphasise Poussin’s ability ‘to make use of the Advantages This Art has over that of his Competitor’; problematically, however, the pre-eminence of the visual medium in this specific example can only be attested to by means of a sustained verbal comparison of the painting and its poetic source, which ultimately seems to imply a more complex, symbiotic relationship in the encounter between the visual and literary arts than Richardson initially admits.
Catriona MacLeod (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoön essay of 1766 has long been understood as a pivotal moment in the demarcation of the spatializing properties of the plastic arts versus the temporal or narrative ...
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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoön essay of 1766 has long been understood as a pivotal moment in the demarcation of the spatializing properties of the plastic arts versus the temporal or narrative properties of literature. This chapter examines the long afterlife of this essay as it reappears as a discursive ‘foreign body’ (akin to and implicating ekphrasis) within a number of novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Going beyond strong critical readings of ekphrases as hostile stand-offs between text and image, however, my analysis of works such as Wilhelm Heinse’s Ardinghello (1787) and Adalbert Stifter’s Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer, 1857), will show how, in case of Heinse, the ventriloquizing of Lessing leads to a dynamic novel that is nevertheless saturated with ekphrastic description. Stifter’s novel allows ekphrasis to spread out from its centre creating an experimentally sclerotic narrative. These hauntings by Lessing reveal not only the entanglement of the modern novel with theories and histories of representation but also its observational stance on its own and the reader’s mediation.Less
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoön essay of 1766 has long been understood as a pivotal moment in the demarcation of the spatializing properties of the plastic arts versus the temporal or narrative properties of literature. This chapter examines the long afterlife of this essay as it reappears as a discursive ‘foreign body’ (akin to and implicating ekphrasis) within a number of novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Going beyond strong critical readings of ekphrases as hostile stand-offs between text and image, however, my analysis of works such as Wilhelm Heinse’s Ardinghello (1787) and Adalbert Stifter’s Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer, 1857), will show how, in case of Heinse, the ventriloquizing of Lessing leads to a dynamic novel that is nevertheless saturated with ekphrastic description. Stifter’s novel allows ekphrasis to spread out from its centre creating an experimentally sclerotic narrative. These hauntings by Lessing reveal not only the entanglement of the modern novel with theories and histories of representation but also its observational stance on its own and the reader’s mediation.
Stephen Cheeke (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers literary responses to one of the most famous Renaissance images of all: the supposed portrait of Beatrice Cenci (long misattributed to Guido Reni), a major nineteenth-century ...
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This chapter considers literary responses to one of the most famous Renaissance images of all: the supposed portrait of Beatrice Cenci (long misattributed to Guido Reni), a major nineteenth-century tourist attraction in Rome. Hawthorne was the writer most obsessively drawn to the portrait, in which he sought to read an original innocence and an innocence regained or redeemed after terrible experience. Beatrice’s portrait therefore presents Hawthorne firstly with what he took to be a type of feminine knowledge; this he aligned with the image as opaque, mysterious, functioning at a level that evades analysis. Hawthorne then proceeds to connect this to the theology of the fortunate fall; that is, to a Christian concept not easily given verbal formulation or summary, one in fact representing a fundamental mystery in time. For Hawthorne, the light of Beatrice Cenci’s face signified the paradox of her having undergone an essential change to her being, though one in which she remained fundamentally the same. The focus of this chapter is Hawthorne’s struggle in The Marble Faun to make sense of this idea – to define just what it is Beatrice Cenci knows; and how she has come to know it.Less
This chapter considers literary responses to one of the most famous Renaissance images of all: the supposed portrait of Beatrice Cenci (long misattributed to Guido Reni), a major nineteenth-century tourist attraction in Rome. Hawthorne was the writer most obsessively drawn to the portrait, in which he sought to read an original innocence and an innocence regained or redeemed after terrible experience. Beatrice’s portrait therefore presents Hawthorne firstly with what he took to be a type of feminine knowledge; this he aligned with the image as opaque, mysterious, functioning at a level that evades analysis. Hawthorne then proceeds to connect this to the theology of the fortunate fall; that is, to a Christian concept not easily given verbal formulation or summary, one in fact representing a fundamental mystery in time. For Hawthorne, the light of Beatrice Cenci’s face signified the paradox of her having undergone an essential change to her being, though one in which she remained fundamentally the same. The focus of this chapter is Hawthorne’s struggle in The Marble Faun to make sense of this idea – to define just what it is Beatrice Cenci knows; and how she has come to know it.
