FORMS OF ATTENTION: TIME AND NARRATIVE IN ECPHRASIS

Abstract

This paper investigates differing forms of attention entailed by the ecphrastic gaze in epic and epigram as a way of considering issues of time and narrative as crucial elements of ecphrasis. Its first section focuses particularly on Paulinus of Nola, who has been almost wholly ignored in recent discussions of ecphrasis, but who not only provides the first example of an ecphrasis of an ecphrasis – the description of an ecphrastic inscription attached to a work of art – but also provides a set of poems which construct the viewer's experience of visiting a church. This is taken as exemplary of a new development of a Christian gaze, a new form of attention. The second section looks specifically at temporality in ecphrasis (through Pliny, Virgil, and epigram), to see how different ideas of time and the experience of looking are inscribed in different genres – which in turn expect and create different forms of knowing. The third section looks particularly at later Greek epigrams, Callistratus and Achilles Tatius, to see how different authors play with ideas of temporality and narrative explored in the first two sections of the paper. Together, these interrelated arguments demonstrate how investigating forms of attention and modes of temporality allows us to develop a more nuanced comprehension of ecphrasis as a historical and aesthetic expression.