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Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza

  • Irmgard Männlein
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The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis
This chapter is in the book The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis

Abstract

In this paper I focus on how the speaker in John of Gaza’s Ekphrasis tabulae mundi makes himself present and stylizes himself. This Late Antique poem is about a mainly figural representation of the cosmos on a ceiling painting in a bath (perhaps in Gaza). Throughout the complex, through the poetic text composed in Nonnian style, the speaker (probably identical with the poet) presents himself as a poeta doctus and as a learned exegete and guide, but also as an ecstatic visionary of the cosmos. I highlight where and how he intersperses self-references in the poem and how they are linked with the ekphrastic description. My thesis is that the poet performatively expresses his achievement in a paragone with the painter of the image. By doing so, he is communicating directly with his audience.

Abstract

In this paper I focus on how the speaker in John of Gaza’s Ekphrasis tabulae mundi makes himself present and stylizes himself. This Late Antique poem is about a mainly figural representation of the cosmos on a ceiling painting in a bath (perhaps in Gaza). Throughout the complex, through the poetic text composed in Nonnian style, the speaker (probably identical with the poet) presents himself as a poeta doctus and as a learned exegete and guide, but also as an ecstatic visionary of the cosmos. I highlight where and how he intersperses self-references in the poem and how they are linked with the ekphrastic description. My thesis is that the poet performatively expresses his achievement in a paragone with the painter of the image. By doing so, he is communicating directly with his audience.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures IX
  5. List of Abbreviations
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
  8. Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams 15
  9. Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis 45
  10. Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata 69
  11. Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name 89
  12. Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
  13. The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram 117
  14. Imagined Spaces, Imagined Buildings, and the Idea of Architectural Representation: Phantasia in the Wall Paintings of the 2nd Style in Rome and the Vesuvian Cities 141
  15. A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) 193
  16. Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis 217
  17. Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram 255
  18. Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
  19. Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry 275
  20. Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza 289
  21. Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity 313
  22. A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice 339
  23. List of Contributors 361
  24. Index Nominum
  25. Index Rerum
  26. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112207697-012

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures IX
  5. List of Abbreviations
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
  8. Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams 15
  9. Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis 45
  10. Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata 69
  11. Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name 89
  12. Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
  13. The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram 117
  14. Imagined Spaces, Imagined Buildings, and the Idea of Architectural Representation: Phantasia in the Wall Paintings of the 2nd Style in Rome and the Vesuvian Cities 141
  15. A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) 193
  16. Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis 217
  17. Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram 255
  18. Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
  19. Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry 275
  20. Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza 289
  21. Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity 313
  22. A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice 339
  23. List of Contributors 361
  24. Index Nominum
  25. Index Rerum
  26. Index Locorum
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