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There is no consensus on a single definition for the phenomenon commonly referred to as ekphrasis,1 either on its meaning or its function. One of the key problems in providing a single, legitimate definition of ekphrasis is the diversity of word-image relationships it encompasses. Situated in the field of intermediality, and loosely defined as “a particular relation […] between conventionally distinct media of expression or communication” (Wolf, The Musicalization of Fiction 37), ekphrasis allows different types of intermedial interactions, not only between verbal and visual artforms, but also across other media, such as architecture, photography, music2 and cinematography.3 The present study, however, focuses only on intermedial interaction between the verbal and the visual, more precisely, on rendering physically existing paintings (the visual) in the context of contemporary ekphrastic art fiction (the verbal). As Wagner points out: if, in fact, “critics agree at all about ekphrasis, they stress the fact that it has been variously defined and variously used and that the definition ultimately depends on the particular argument to be deployed” (Icons – Texts – Iconotexts 11). This chapter will provide a diachronic overview of various definitions given to ekphrasis and analyse the points of agreement and controversy among scholars.

The word ekphrasis is of Greek origin; according to its etymology it is composed of two Greek words: “ek (out) and phrazein (tell, declare, pronounce)” (Heffernan 191), which renders its meaning as “to speak out” or “to tell in full”. However, the meaning of ekphrasis has undergone many revisions throughout its existence:

First employed as a rhetorical term in the second century A.D. to denote simply a vivid description, it was then (in the third century) made to designate the description of visual art… But it has not been confined to that meaning. In its first recorded appearance in English (1715), it was defined as “a plain declaration or interpretation of a thing” (cited OED), and in a recent handbook of rhetorical terms it is called simply “a self-contained description, often on a commonplace subject, which can be inserted at a fitting place in a discourse…”(Heffernan 191)

The earliest definition of ekphrasis is found in the field of classical rhetoric, and appears in a late classical Greek collection of rhetorical handbooks, called Progymnasmata.4 It is given as “a speech that brings the subject matter vividly before the eyes.”5 The effect of vividness, or enargeia, is seen as a defining quality of ekphrasis and, therefore, as central to its understanding. Enargeia is an “impact on the mind’s eye of the listener who must […] be almost made to see the subject” (Webb, “Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern” 13). In antiquity, ekphrasis was studied to be used as a rhetorical technique (28), as a means of “achieving persuasion [and] altering the listener’s perception of the subject in a way that helped the orator to win their assent” (10). The subjects of ekphrasis (as presented in Progymnasmata) range from descriptions of persons, mute animals, plants, places, events, festivals, times, seasons, states of affairs and the manner in which something is done to descriptions of paintings and statues (56). Hagstrum points out that “[t]he skill to create set descriptions, intended to bring visual reality before the mind’s eye by means of words […] was an admired and fully approved trick of the rhetorician’s trade and as such was a regular scholastic exercise” (29). Therefore, the ultimate goal of ekphrasis as a rhetorical device lies in rendering any given subject into words and delivering it in such a way as to transform the listener into a viewer. Consequently, the referent recedes into the background, being less important than the optimal effect of enargeia produced on the listener:

Enargeia implies the achievement in verbal discourse of a natural quality or of a pictorial quality that is highly natural. Enargeia refers to the actualization of potency, the realization of capacity or capability, the achievement in art and rhetoric of the dynamic and purposive life of nature. (33)

However, when ekphrasis is applied to the field of literary studies, the subject matter draws special attention from scholars, and it is subject to restrictions that are outlined in this chapter. These restrictions are registered in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. In its first (1949) and second (1970) editions, ekphrasis is defined as “the rhetorical description of a work of art, one of the types of progymnasma (rhetorical exercise, q.v.)” (Hammond 377). In the third (1996) and the fourth (2012) editions, it is interpreted as “an extended and detailed literary description of any object, real or imaginary” (Hornblower 495). The difference between ekphrasis as a rhetorical device and ekphrasis as a literary device has been studied by Goehr, who argues that:

Whereas modern ekphrasis, especially from the late nineteenth century on, focuses on artworks and their mediums, ancient ekphrasis focused on speech and written acts performed within a wide range of practices necessary for the education of citizens. Modern ekphrasis focuses on works that bring other works to aesthetic presence; ancient ekphrasis focused on speech acts that brought objects, scenes, or events to imaginary presence. (397)

In other words, the essential difference between the late classical definition and the modern understanding of ekphrasis is that ekphrasis is no longer characterised by an effect on the listener and the metamorphosis of listener into viewer, but rather by its reference to an artefact, more specifically, an artwork.

One of the earliest definitions of ekphrasis as a literary device is provided by Saintsbury in 1908, who interprets it as “a set description intended to bring person, place, picture, etc., vividly before the mind’s eye” (491). By and large, Saintsbury’s interpretation resembles the understanding of ekphrasis as a rhetorical device that aims to make the reader envision a given subject; not only is the subject matter not clearly defined, but the pictorial source – if that is what is meant by “picture” – is not separated from any other object that can be described verbally. In 1955 Spitzer makes ekphrasis more specific by giving it a more restricted definition: “the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art, whose description implies […] ‘une transposition d’art’, the reproduction, through the medium of words, of sensuously perceptible objets d’art” (218). Krieger delimits the subject matter as “a pictorial or sculptural work of art”, yet at the same time he limits ekphrasis, claiming that it pertains to only one form of literature. Spitzer’s interpretation is later commented on by Krieger, who says that “[e]kphrasis, according to this definition, clearly presupposes that one art, poetry, is defining its mission through its dependence on the mission of another art – painting, sculpture, or others” (Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign 6). Initially, Krieger (1967) interprets ekphrasis as “the imitation in literature of a work of plastic art” (“Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry” 265), thus emphasising the importance of ekphrasis as going beyond only poetry and, later on, insisting on extending “the range of possible ekphrastic objects by re-connecting ekphrasis to all ‘word-painting’” (Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign 9). Krieger’s definition is later rephrased by Piltz and Åström, who claim that “ekphrasis is a descriptive discourse that clearly brings before our eyes the things, persons or actions depicted […] [it] is a word-picture” (50). However, Krieger develops his original definition, becoming more explicit about what is meant by plastic art: “I use ekphrasis (as it has commonly been used for some time), to refer to the attempted imitation in words of an object of the plastic arts, primarily painting or sculpture” (Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign 4). A further interpretation is suggested by Bender, who refers to ekphrasis as a “literary description of real or imagined works of visual art” (51). By the same token, Kurman identifies ekphrasis as “the description in verse of an art object” (1); Weisstein correspondingly interprets it as “literary works describing specific works of art” (23), while Howatson states that ekphrasis is a “type of rhetorical exercise taking the form of a description of a work of art” (203).

Description, une transposition d’art, reproduction, imitation and descriptive discourse – these are the words that are used frequently to define ekphrasis. The scholars quoted above emphasise description as the main function of ekphrasis, agreeing that an ekphrastic text contains a description of an artwork (physically existing or fictitious) that is reproduced or imitated through the medium of words. However, understanding ekphrasis as having a merely descriptive function is rather limited and misleading as it ignores the interpretative potential of ekphrasis, which in turn suggests another way of perceiving an artwork via a literary text. The art historian David Carrier tries to draw a distinction between ekphrastic description and interpretation:

An ekphrasis tells the story represented, only incidentally describing pictorial composition. An interpretation gives a systematic analysis of composition. Ekphrases are not concerned with visual precedents. Interpretations explain how inherited schema [sic] are modified. An ekphrasis only selectively indicates details; an interpretation attends to seemingly small points, which may, indeed, change how we see the picture as a whole when they are analysed. An interpretation treats the picture as an image, and so tells both what is represented and how it is represented. (21)

Although he admits that ekphrasis incidentally refers to details of pictorial composition, he does not believe that ekphrastic description of carefully selected details can create and/or influence the interpretation of an artwork. In other words, and similarly to many other scholars, Carrier separates ekphrastic texts from Bildgedicht texts (Kranz).6 This distinction may sound plausible in theory; however, it fails to function in practice due to the simple fact that the act of describing involves an inherently interpretative function. Description becomes a means of representing an artwork and it is affected by many factors, including the subjective opinion of the viewer, the general understanding of the composition of an artwork, the ability to relate to the period of its creation and interpret the encoded meanings. The attempt to represent verbally what is represented in a pictorial source, without knowing the original intention of the artist, leads to the creation of new meanings and therefore new interpretations of the artwork. As such, it may affect the way it is perceived by others. In Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Critic as Artist”, one of the characters, Gilbert, discusses assigning new meanings to a painting and suggests the following:

And so the picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is, and reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing […]. It treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself […] to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. (985)

Therefore, ekphrasis is an example of both “the creative act itself – through the Greek mimesis, imitating, copying – and of the secondary critical act of commentary, description, revelation” (Cheeke 185). Similarly, Sager Eidt applies an “expanded definition of ekphrasis as an interpretive tool” (10) and demonstrates how “different genres in either modality influence the way the reader or viewer reconstructs the implications of a work of art” (10). Such an understanding of ekphrasis is crucial for the further analysis of texts in the present study, where the term ekphrasis is used to refer to texts in which a pictorial source is described and interpreted.

One of the most influential and widely cited definitions of ekphrasis has been formulated by Heffernan, who interprets it as “the verbal representation of a visual representation” (3). On the one hand, by regarding ekphrasis as “verbal representation”, Heffernan departs from seeing it as exclusively descriptive. On the other, he limits ekphrastic practice to works of representational art. Heffernan points out that his definition

excludes a good deal of what some critics would have ekphrasis include – namely literature about texts. It also allows us to distinguish ekphrasis from two other ways of mingling literature and the visual arts: pictorialism and iconicity. What distinguishes those two things from ekphrasis is that both of them aim chiefly to represent natural objects and artifacts rather than works of representational art. (3)

In seeing ekphrasis as a “narrative response to pictorial stasis” (4), Heffernan disagrees with Krieger’s understanding of ekphrasis as a device used to “interrupt the temporality of discourse, to freeze it during its indulgence in spatial exploration” (Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign 7). He also disagrees with Krieger’s idea that “language – in spite of its arbitrary character and its temporality – freeze[s] itself into a spatial form” (“The Problem of Ekphrasis” 5). This applies equally to Steiner, who defines ekphrasis as the “mode of representing temporal events as action stopped at its climactic moment” (Pictures of Romance 13), or a pregnant moment “in which a poem aspires to the atemporal ‘eternity’ of the stopped-action painting” (13-14). Conversely, Heffernan recognises ekphrasis as “dynamic and obstetric” (5) and argues that it “typically delivers from the pregnant moment of visual arts its embryonically narrative impulse, and thus makes explicit the story that visual art tells only by implication” (5). According to Heffernan, “[t]o represent a painting or sculptured figure in words is to evoke its power – the power to fix, excite, amaze, entrance, disturb, or intimidate the viewer” (7). The storytelling impulse of ekphrasis is closely allied to its interpretative nature, namely, that of creating new meanings and giving new interpretations to an artwork. The work of art is integrated into the narrative process to such an extent that it acquires life of its own and shows its meaning from a different perspective.

Heffernan’s theory has attracted many followers, one of whom is Clüver, who modifies the original definition of ekphrasis by accepting the first part – “verbal representation” – but introducing major changes in the second. Clüver’s definition of ekphrasis becomes: “the verbal representation of a real or fictitious text composed in a non-verbal sign system” (“Ekphrasis Reconsidered” 26, emphasis in original). This definition clearly expands the range of the objects for ekphrastic representation; “it covers architecture, as well as […] music and non-narrative dance” (26). One year later Clüver reformulates his definition by replacing “verbal representation” with “verbalization”: “ekphrasis is the verbalization of real or fictitious text composed in a non-verbal sign system” (“Quotation, Enargeia” 49, emphasis in original). He validates this final adjustment by differentiating between “verbalization” and “verbal representation”:

Verbalization is a form of verbal re-presentation that consists of more than a name or a title […]. The verbalization may form part of a larger piece of writing or, as in the case of a number of Bildgedichte, may constitute the entire text. It can take forms that are not descriptive in a conventional way; but as verbalization it would retain a certain degree of enargeia. (45)

Thus, verbalization has less of a connection to mimesis than verbal representation, but at the same time is still linked to enargeia, a concept central to ekphrasis. Among Heffernan’s other followers is Blackhawk, who regards ekphrasis as “verbal description of a visual representation” (1) and Bilman, who maintains that ekphrasis is “the verbal representation of a visual work of art” (1). However, due to the variety of texts that can be grouped under the rubric of ekphrastic writing, as well as a growing number of au courant inter-art encounters in ekphrastic practice, the modern approach to ekphrasis is based on an understanding that there cannot be only one exclusive definition. Therefore, Yacobi extends the concept of ekphrasis by referring to it as an umbrella term that “subsumes various forms of rendering the visual object into words” (“Pictorial Models” 600). By the same token, Robillard refrains from interpreting ekphrasis at all, mentioning the possible risks of working towards a single definition:

One of the risks of trying to arrive at single definition of ekphrasis, then, is that these immediately define the boundaries of both art and literature, neither of which have, in the course of their history, proven particularly stable entities. (54)

Furthermore, Scholz, exploring the possible definitions and functions of ekphrasis, raises the following questions: “Should ekphrasis therefore be treated as a specification of intertextuality? Or should we treat it, like ‘narration,’ very broadly as a term for a mode of writing – to be contrasted with ‘description,’ ‘argumentation’ or ‘dialogue’?” (74). He continues his argument by saying that

[c]lassifying ekphrasis as a literary genre will raise questions about the formal and contentual [sic] textual markers, and about the referential characteristics which distinguish ekphrasis from other (descriptive) genres. Classifying it as a macrostructure will involve focusing on the possibility that ekphrasis may possess certain species-specific syntactic features. Classifying it as variant of intertextuality will lead to highlighting kinds and degrees of similarities and differences with the (pictorial or sculptural) ‘pretext’ of keeping with the pragmatic thrust of Classical rhetoric, lay greater stress on the intended effect of ekphrasis on the listener/reader, thereby shifting the focus of attention from the ekphrastic text to the ‘mental’ aspects of the communicative situation initiated by such an ekphrastic text. (74)

Therefore, similarly to Yacobi, Scholz proposes that ekphrasis is “a term with a ‘family of meanings’, with each member of that family calling for a separate definition” (75). It may be assumed that because ekphrasis encompasses such a wide variety of forms of intermedial interaction, settling on one definition that would be restricted yet suitably broad enough to cover all the possible examples of ekphrastic texts is simply impossible. That is why I would argue that any definition of ekphrasis should be tailored to a specific area of study.

As shown in this chapter, the definition of ekphrasis has developed since late antiquity in a twofold process of restriction and expansion. Ekphrasis as a rhetorical device is based on the oral practice of enargeia and focuses mainly on the question of how to transform a listener into a viewer. However, understanding ekphrasis as a literary device shifts the focus from how to what, namely, to the subject matter itself, which is restricted to descriptions of physically existing or fictitious works of art in contemporary literature. The ekphrastic frame of reference is later extended to include not only contemporary but also ancient texts, both of which refer to the arts. Moreover, ekphrasis, originally used in descriptions of works of art, develops an interpretative function, and in doing so suggests another way of perceiving an artwork – via a literary text. Furthermore, ekphrasis is seen as a verbal representation that is driven by a narrative impulse to make explicit to the reader the story of the visual representation of an artwork. It is this storytelling impulse that encourages a new interpretation of any given artwork. Finally, ekphrasis is referred to as an umbrella term that could be used to define various forms of rendering visual objects into words. While a variety of definitions of ekphrasis have been suggested, the present study will adopt and modify the definition first suggested by Heffernan. Ekphrasis will be examined as a form of verbal-visual interaction in contemporary prose fiction, its primary focus one particular form of visual arts: painting.

Heffernan’s definition of ekphrasis as “the verbal representation of a visual representation” (3) refers to the fact that “ekphrasis uses one medium of representation to represent another” (4), in which case the artwork represented in an ekphrastic text is a representation of something in particular. A painting on the wall is a story and each story is an interpretation or representation of something. Ekphrasis is thus a form of double representation. The painting is transformed by the novelist’s imagination, reproduced as a narrative of the process of creating an artwork. According to Mitchell, all representations are founded on a triangular relationship “of something or someone, by something or someone, to someone” (“Representation” 12, emphasis in original). Therefore, the painting may and should be regarded as the re-presentation of an artist’s representation, which itself becomes fiction. Both the representing verbal and the represented visual domains are nothing other than representations of the object (Yacobi, “The Ekphrastic Model” 22), which has been filtered and transformed by the painter’s projection of it onto canvas. Ekphrasis, as in the quotation, incorporates a three-dimensional representation that Yacobi categorises into “first-order, strictly ‘represented’; […] second-order, which is ‘representational’ in the visual mode; […] [and] third-order, which is ‘re-presentational’ in the linguistic discourse” (22). Furthermore, the reader “encounter[s] the original object […] at a twofold remove, as a second-level reflex, mediated by the pictorial image that the language itself mediates, re-images, quotes for us” (22, emphasis in original). In other words, first-order representation applies to the original object (a visual work of art) and the details that are “strictly represented”; second-order representation involves the visual representation – a pictorial image of the object and/or details; and third-order representation is a verbal “re-presentation” of the pictorial source. Developing further the parallel between ekphrasis and quotation theory, Yacobi contends that the visual representation is reconceptualised in the linguistic discourse in accordance with the writer’s frame of communication:

The visual source transforms in verbal re-imaging from a self-contained whole into a part of another whole, hence from end to means. So, like all quotation, and quotation alone, ekphrasis entails a peculiar logic of recontextualizing: the visual artifact becomes in transfer an inset within a verbal frame. Thereby it comes to signify in a new way and to serve new purposes, as well as to unfold on new medial axes, all of them determined by the writer’s frame of communication. (22-3, emphasis in original)

Here Yacobi draws attention to the fact that, as an inset into the verbal frame, the visual source obtains new meanings, that is to say, it is interpreted in a different way in order to serve the purpose of the writer’s intentions. Both the tripartite principle of representation of an art object and its multiple re-interpretations are the fundamental points that lead to a better understanding of ekphrasis. It is necessary to incorporate them into the definition of ekphrasis, which in this study will be understood as a verbal re-presentation and re-interpretation of a visual representation (painting).