Ekphrasis Critics

Question 1

The etymology of ekphrasis?

Answer 1

Ekphrasis, from ek-phrazein (Greek): to speak out

Question 2

The two types of ekphrasis?

Answer 2

apostrophe: address to the artwork
prosopopeia: envoicing the artwork

Question 3

Early definition of ekphrasis?

Answer 3

ut pictura poesis: ‘as is painting, so is poetry’
Horace (1st century BC)

Question 4

Simple definition of ekphrasis?

Answer 4

‘a verbal representation of a visual representation’
James Heffernan, Museum of Words (1993)

Question 5

Association between painting and poetry?

Answer 5

‘painting is mute poetry and poetry is a speaking picture’
Plutarch (2nd century AD, attributed to Simonides of Ceos, 6th century
BC)

Question 6

The advantage of ekphrasis poetry?

Answer 6

‘the poem knows something or tells something that had been held back by the
silent image’
Stephen Cheeke, Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis (2008)

Question 7

We must write poems about paintings?

Answer 7

‘the all-at-onceness of the image is an incitement
to prosody’
T. J. Clark, ‘What is the burglar after?’ (2022)

Question 8

The linear progress of paintings and poetry?

Answer 8

‘a poem aspires to the atemporal “eternity” of the stopped-action painting, or laments its inability to achieve it’
Wendy Steiner, Pictures of Romance (1988)

Question 9

Different ways of looking at a picture?

Answer 9

‘I do not look at [a picture] as one looks at a thing. Rather than seeing it, I see
according to, or with it’
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’ (1960)