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12 On gazers’ encounters with visual art

Ekphrasis, readers, ‘iconotexts’

Abstract

This chapter defines ekphrasis concisely as ‘the verbal representation of real or fictive configurations composed in a non-kinetic visual medium’. It rejects narrower definitions that exclude texts on non-representational visual configurations, including architecture, or restrict the discourse to literary texts representing works of art. But with its emphasis on the text, the concise definition unduly reinforces the consideration of ekphrasis as a form of ‘intermedial transposition’ in contemporary discourse on intermedial relations. An ekphrastic text should be primarily approached as the record of a viewer’s interpretive encounter with a non-kinetic visual configuration, which may not actually contain anything that has been ‘transposed’ from the image. This viewer may be the persona of a poem, a figure in a prose narrative, or an art critic. It is the reader’s task to construct these viewers in the interpretation of any ekphrastic text. But the role of the reader has not received much attention. This includes the question of the immediate mental reception of ekphrastic texts. The critical construct of ‘iconotexts’, suggesting that such verbal texts spontaneously trigger a mental visual image for the informed reader, is problematic, and even in a more general sense the term may be of limited critical use.

Abstract

This chapter defines ekphrasis concisely as ‘the verbal representation of real or fictive configurations composed in a non-kinetic visual medium’. It rejects narrower definitions that exclude texts on non-representational visual configurations, including architecture, or restrict the discourse to literary texts representing works of art. But with its emphasis on the text, the concise definition unduly reinforces the consideration of ekphrasis as a form of ‘intermedial transposition’ in contemporary discourse on intermedial relations. An ekphrastic text should be primarily approached as the record of a viewer’s interpretive encounter with a non-kinetic visual configuration, which may not actually contain anything that has been ‘transposed’ from the image. This viewer may be the persona of a poem, a figure in a prose narrative, or an art critic. It is the reader’s task to construct these viewers in the interpretation of any ekphrastic text. But the role of the reader has not received much attention. This includes the question of the immediate mental reception of ekphrastic texts. The critical construct of ‘iconotexts’, suggesting that such verbal texts spontaneously trigger a mental visual image for the informed reader, is problematic, and even in a more general sense the term may be of limited critical use.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. Notes on contributors x
  5. Acknowledgements xiv
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Early modern encounters
  8. 1 ‘Lamentable objects’ 27
  9. ‘Lamentable objects’: ekphrasis and historical materiality in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece
  10. 2 ‘Fabulously counterfeit’ 48
  11. 3 ‘Art indeed is long, but life is short’ 70
  12. 4 ‘The Painter has made a finer Story than the Poet’ 91
  13. Part II: Nineteenth-century encounters
  14. 5 Blind spots of narration? 109
  15. 6 The face of Beatrice Cenci 126
  16. 7 Mirroring naturalism in word and image 144
  17. 8 Close encounters of the third kind 165
  18. Part III: Modern and postmodern encounters
  19. 9 An artist of the bizarre 183
  20. 10 The graphics of ekphrastic writing 203
  21. 11 Ekphrasis/exscription 219
  22. 12 On gazers’ encounters with visual art 237
  23. Afterword 257
  24. Index 267
Ekphrastic encounters
This chapter is in the book Ekphrastic encounters
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526125804.00021

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. Notes on contributors x
  5. Acknowledgements xiv
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Early modern encounters
  8. 1 ‘Lamentable objects’ 27
  9. ‘Lamentable objects’: ekphrasis and historical materiality in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece
  10. 2 ‘Fabulously counterfeit’ 48
  11. 3 ‘Art indeed is long, but life is short’ 70
  12. 4 ‘The Painter has made a finer Story than the Poet’ 91
  13. Part II: Nineteenth-century encounters
  14. 5 Blind spots of narration? 109
  15. 6 The face of Beatrice Cenci 126
  16. 7 Mirroring naturalism in word and image 144
  17. 8 Close encounters of the third kind 165
  18. Part III: Modern and postmodern encounters
  19. 9 An artist of the bizarre 183
  20. 10 The graphics of ekphrastic writing 203
  21. 11 Ekphrasis/exscription 219
  22. 12 On gazers’ encounters with visual art 237
  23. Afterword 257
  24. Index 267
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