This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. It seeks to complicate the traditional model of ekphrasis as a form of paragone (competition), and proposes a more reciprocal model that involves an encounter or exchange between word and image.

This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. Ekphrasis has been traditionally regarded as a form of paragone (competition) between word and image. This interdisciplinary collection of essays 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. Ekphrastic encounters brings together leading scholars working in the field of word-and-image studies and offers a fresh exploration of ekphrastic texts from the Renaissance to the present day. Taken together, the chapters establish a new set of theoretical frameworks for exploring the ekphrastic encounter.

Introduction: from paragone to encounter – David Kennedy and Richard MeekPart I: Early modern encounters1 ‘Lamentable objects’: ekphrasis and historical materiality in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece – Rachel Eisendrath2 ‘Fabulously counterfeit’: ekphrastic encounters in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy – Richard Meek3 ‘Art indeed is long, but life is short’: ekphrasis and mortality in Andrew Marvell – Keith McDonald4 ‘The Painter has made a finer Story than the Poet’: Jonathan Richardson’s ekphrastic ‘Dissertation’ on Poussin’s Tancred and Erminia – Jason LawrencePart II: Nineteenth-century encounters5 Blind spots of narration? Ekphrasis and Laocoön digressions in the novel – Catriona MacLeod6 The face of Beatrice Cenci – Stephen Cheeke7 Mirroring naturalism in word and image: a critical exchange between Emile Zola and Edouard Manet – Lauren S. Weingarden8 Close encounters of the third kind: Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’ – Jane ThomasPart III: Modern and postmodern encounters9 An artist of the bizarre: Stanley Spencer’s ‘ordinary’ ekphrases – Liliane Louvel10 The graphics of ekphrastic writing: Raymond Pettibon’s drawing-writing – Tilo Reifenstein11 Ekphrasis/exscription: Jean-Luc Nancy on thinking and touching art – Johanna Malt12 On gazers’ encounters with visual art: ekphrasis, readers, ‘iconotexts’ – Claus ClüverAfterword – James A. W. HeffernanIndex

This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of ekphrasis: the verbal representation of visual art. Ekphrasis has been traditionally regarded as a form of paragone (competition) between word and image. This interdisciplinary collection of essays 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.Ekphrastic encounters brings together leading scholars working in the field of word-and-image studies and offers a fresh exploration of ekphrastic texts from the Renaissance to the present day. Taken together, the chapters establish a new set of theoretical frameworks for exploring the ekphrastic encounter.