The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis: From the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity

Book

The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis

From the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity

Edited by: Matthew Chaldekas and Irmgard Männlein

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2025

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Explore this Subject How to publish with us

This book is in the series

Volume 194 | Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

About this book

This volume examines the literary figure of ekphrasis with a particular focus on its role in an overarching poetic or artistic design. As a literary phenomenon with roots in the earliest Greek poetry, ekphrasis has been traditionally defined as Kunstbeschreibung (‘art description’). Recent scholarship has challenged this definition and broadened it to extend beyond descriptions of artworks and beyond poetic contexts. Nevertheless, ekphrasis retains the basic outline of a sensory, especially visual, experience translated into words. As such it invites an audience to engage with a real or imagined object and to reflect on the text-as-object and its artistic construction. The sensory element of ancient ekphrasis allows this literary device to raise questions of perception and cognition, as well as materiality, spatiality, and aesthetics. The papers in this volume engage with a variety of texts and objects which shed new light on the special relationship between ekphrasis and poetry, ekphrasis and art. The material covered here ranges from the Hellenistic period, where ekphrasis experienced its great efflorescence, to Late Antiquity, and it will be of interest to literary scholars, art historians, and archaeologists.

Author / Editor information

Matthew Chaldekas and Irmgard Männlein, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Foreword Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
List of Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed
Introduction Matthew Chaldekas and Irmgard Männlein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams Flavia Licciardello Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	15
Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis Matthew Chaldekas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	45
Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata Peter von Möllendorff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	69
Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name Karel Thein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	89
Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram Lucia Floridi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	117
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 Martin Kovacs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	141
A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) Jan Kwapisz, Maria Rosaria Falivene and Mieszko Karnas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	193
Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis Alessandro Stavru Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	217
Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram Jacqueline Klooster Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	255
Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry Manuel Baumbach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	275
Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza Irmgard Männlein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	289
Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity Saskia Schomber Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	313
A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice Viola Palmieri and Irmgard Männlein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	339
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	361
Index Nominum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed
Index Rerum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed
Index Locorum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

October 15, 2025

eBook ISBN:

9783112207697

Hardcover published on:

October 15, 2025

Hardcover ISBN:

9783119147224

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Front matter:

12

Main content:

388

Illustrations:

33

Tables:

2

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112207697

eBook ISBN: 9783112207697

Hardcover ISBN: 9783119147224

Keywords for this book

Greek poetry; ekphrasis; aesthetics

Audience(s) for this book

Researchers, Postgraduates, Undergraduates

Safety & product resources

Manufacturer information:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com

The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Topics

Table of contents

Bibliographic data