Ekphrasis ancient and modern: The invention of a genre1

Abstract

In contemporary critical terminology ‘ekphrasis’ has come to be firmly associated with the subject of this journal: word and image. Mention ‘ekphrasis’ to an art historian, literary critic or classicist, and the examples that spring to mind are likely to include the Homeric Shield of Achilles and its many literary imitations, the rhetorical and allegorical descriptions of paintings written by later Greek prose authors, like Lucian and the Elder and Younger Philostratos or, from more recent periods of Western literary history, John Keats' meditation on his tantalisingly still and silent Grecian Urn. This ‘genre’, or ‘trope’, of ekphrasis evokes a network of interlocking questions and interests, from the positivist pursuit of lost monuments described in ancient and medieval ekphrasis to the poststructuralist fascination with a textual fragment which declares itself to be pure artifice, the representation of representation.