Haptic Ekphrasis

Abstract

While ekphrasis, or the verbal representation of a visual representation, has long been discussed in relation to theories of sight, in this essay I argue that scholars of the nineteenth century should also attend to matters of the haptic (defined here as including both emotion and touch) as a crucial aspect of understanding ekphrasis. Here I make three claims: (1) haptic ekphrasis is particularly relevant to the context of the nineteenth century and thus to Victorian examples of the form; (2) haptic ekphrasis is exceptionally useful for minoritarian (specifically women and queer) writers of the period; and (3) the manner in which haptic elements appear in nineteenth-century ekphrastic poetry resonate with Victorian discursive shifts from moral sympathy, early and mid-century, to the physiological aesthetics of aesthetic empathy (Einfühlung or feeling-into) by century's end.