Verbal and Visual Communication—
Ekphrasis
Laura M. Sager Eidt,
”Toward a Definition of Ekphrasis in
Literature and Film” in Writing and Filming
the Painting: Ekphrasis in Literature and Film
The shield produced by
Hephaestus described in the
Iliad, Book 18 by Homer
The first thing he created was a huge and sturdy
shield,
all wonderfully crafted. Around its outer edge,
he fixed a triple rim, glittering in the
light,
attaching to it a silver carrying strap.
The shield had five layers. On the outer one,
with his great skill he fashioned many rich
designs.
There he hammered out the earth, the heavens,
the sea,
the untiring sun, the moon at the full, along with
every constellation which crowns the heavens—
the Pleiades, the Hyades, mighty Orion,
and the Bear, which some people call the Wain,
always circling in the same position, watching
Orion,
the only stars that never bathe in Ocean stream.
The shield produced by Hephaestus
described in the Iliad, Book 18 by Homer
Then he created two splendid
cities of mortal
men.
In one, there were feasts
and weddings. By the light
of blazing torches, people
were leading the brides
out from their homes and
through the town to loud
music
of the bridal song. There
were young lads dancing,
whirling to the constant
tunes of flutes and lyres,
while all the women stood
beside their doors, staring
in admiration.
Historical overview of the verbal visual paragone (~ comparison,
debate)
Plato (424-348 BC)
• inferiority of words to images (regarding the mimetic faithfulness of representation).
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
• parallel between poetry and painting: both imitate human nature in action but with
different means (11)
Augustine (354-430 AD)
• greater difficulty of receiving poetry → it is more valuable than painting
• writing encompasses the spiritual more effectively
→ greater moral and religious value
→ devaluation of painting (it is absent from the seven liberal arts in 5th century AD)
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) (Della Pittura, 1435)
• reasserts the painter’s primacy (the painter excites imagination) (12)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
• reclaimed the prominent place of the visual arts → to prove the superiority of the
visual
(Gotthold Ephraim) Lessing (1729-1781) (Laokoon, 1766)
• Attempts to reverse the hierarchy by strictly distinguishing the representational
realms of poetry and painting
• Poetry: best suited to represent actions in time (temporal nature of its reception).
• Painting: represents a single pregnant moment in space (perceived as a static object).
• Strongly opposes to ekphrasis (it mingles painting and poetry)
Definitions of ekphrasis I—the aesthetic
approach/paragone
• Generally, it refers to works of poetry and prose
that talk about or incorporate visual works of
art. (9)
→ verbal to visual
• Verbal discourses that directly verbalize one or
more visual images. (9)
• As a rhetorical device defined in terms of its
effect on an audience: as ”expository speech
which vividly brings the subject before our eyes”
(Theon [335-405] qtd. in Seidt 11).
Definitions of ekphrasis II—the aesthetic
approach/paragone
Murray Krieger:
•
a device to ”interrupt the temporality of discourse, to freeze it during its indulgence
in spatial exploration” (12)
• Ekphrastic principle: poems that seek to emulate the pictorial or sculptural arts by
achieving a kind of spatiality.
→ for the Greeks it implied a visual impact on the mind’s eye of the listener
→ today it renders a visual object into words (12-3)
• Ekphrasis today is verbal representation of a visual representation. (13)
Leo Spitzer:
•
”the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art, which description
implies [...] the production through the medium of words of sensuously perceptible
objets d’art [...]”.
Wendy Steiner:
•
a description of a ”pregnant moment in paintings,” an attempt to imitate the visual
arts by describing a still moment and thereby halting time (13-4).
Definitions of ekphrasis III—the ideological
approach/paragone
• From the late 80s as a social and ideological
struggle – the opposing terms have different
ideological roles (14)
Ernest B. Gilman:
• ”if the image lurks in the heart of language as its
unspeakable other, then [...] images harbor a
similarly charged connection with language—as
an invisible other” (14).
Grant F. Scott:
• Ekphrasis is the appropriation of the ”visual
other” and as an attempt to ”transform and
master the image by inscribing it” (14)
Definitions of ekphrasis III—the ideological
approach/paragone: the implications
•
•
•
•
What are the implications of such claims or formulations?
hierarchy of the verbal and the visual media
power relations
It is a means of demonstrating dominance and power. (15)
W. J. T. Mitchell and James Heffernan:
• Ekphrastic texts project the visual as ”other to language”.
What does the other (or Other) imply?
Bernhard F. Scholz:
• The concept of ekphrasis refers to a range of practices rather than to
a distinct corpus or genre of texts.
What does ”practice” signify here?
The excess of definitions
• As a rhetorical figure: (15)
→ in terms of its effect on the listener
• As a rhetorical exercise:
→ as a term for a (descriptive) genre studied in terms of
composition and subject matter (15-6)
• As a literary genre: (16)
→ defined by reference to form and/or subject matter
• A macrostructure:
→ defined in syntactic terms (e. g. plot or collage)
• As an intertextual relation:
→ defined by its characteristic relation to another text
• As a mode of writing:
→ to be contrasted with ‘description,’ ‘argumentation,’ or
‘dialogue’
Expanding the definition of ekphrasis
Claus Clüver:
• the verbalisation of real or fictitious texts
composed in a non-verbal sign system (17)
Sigling Bruhn:
• The representation in one medium of a real or
fictitious text composed in another medium (17)
→ visual representation of a verbal representation
(18) vs verbal representation of a visual
representation (cf. Heffernan’s definition 13)
Laura M. Sager Eidt:
• the verbalisation, quotation or dramatization of
real or fictitious texts composed in another sign
system (19)
Visual Ekphrasis:
Thomas Struth, Galleria dell’Accademia I, Venedig
[Venice], 1992 (184.5 x 228.3 cm)
Visual Ekphrasis:
Thomas Struth, Kunsthistorisches Museum III,
Wien [Vienna], 1989 (187 x 145 cm)