Abstract
The article discusses the semantic aspects of ekphrasis and meta-ekphrasis in Julian Barnes’s essay “Géricault: Catastrophe into Art” from the cognitive poetics perspective. In his essay, Barnes dwells upon the history and interpretations of Géricault’s masterpiece which represents the survivors of the wreck of a French frigate in 1816. The aim of the study is to reveal the semantic integration of ekphrastic contexts (those parts of the essay which provide description of a painting) and meta-ekphrastic contexts (those parts of the essay which are not descriptions of a painting per se, however they only develop their meaning in connection with ekphrastic contexts). The article suggests using the term meta-ekphrasis to account for the textual contexts which while being semantically related to ekphrasis, do not offer a painting description but a narration about some events related with the painting or ideas inspired by looking at the painting. Used in this meaning, the term meta-ekphrasis is utilised in the paper to reveal the development of Barnes’s original idea about tragedy and art in his essay. The research is grounded in cognitive poetic approach to ekphrasis and employs cognitive poetic instruments of analysis. It presents the results which demonstrate that the main cognitive poetic means that ensure semantic interaction of ekphrastic and meta-ekphrastic contexts in Barnes’s essay are the following: dialogism, hypothetical modality and conceptual metaphors with the source domain of SEA NAVIGATION. It is the semantic integrity of ekphrastic and meta-ekphrastic contexts in Barnes’s essay that allows the writer to present his unconventional treatment of tragedy as being purposeful since it produces art. The article can be of interest to the scholars of sematic interaction between verbal and visual texts as well as cognitive poetic facets of prose texts.
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