ABSTRACT
Examining a wide range of ekphrastic poems, David Kennedy argues that contemporary British poets writing out of both mainstream and avant-garde traditions challenge established critical models of ekphrasis with work that is more complex than representational or counter-representational responses to paintings in museums and galleries. Even when the poem appears to be straightforwardly representational, it is often selectively so, producing a 'virtual' work that doesn't exist in actuality. Poets such as Kelvin Corcoran, Peter Hughes, and Gillian Clarke, Kennedy suggests, relish the ekphrastic encounter as one in which word and image become mutually destabilizing. Similarly, other poets engage with the source artwork as a performance that participates in the ethical realm. Showing that the ethical turn in ekphrastic poetry is often powerfully gendered, Kennedy also surveys a range of ekphrastic poets from the Renaissance and nineteenth century to trace a tradition of female ekphrastic poetry that includes Pauline Stainer and Frances Presley. Kennedy concludes with a critique of ekphrastic exercises in creative writing teaching, proposing that ekphrastic writing that takes greater account of performance spectatorship may offer more fruitful models for the classroom than the narrativizing of images.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|34 pages
The Ekphrastic Encounter
chapter Chapter 1|14 pages
The Ekphrastic Encounter: Representation, Enquiry and Critique
chapter Chapter 2|18 pages
Reframing the Ekphrastic Canon from Keats to Ashbery
part 2|33 pages
The Contemporary British Ekphrastic Poem
chapter Chapter 3|14 pages
Possible Scenes: Ekphrasis and Trends in Post-war British Poetry
chapter Chapter 4|17 pages
Varieties of Ekphrasis: Framing Histories, Framed Narratives
part 3|33 pages
Ekphrasis and the Female
chapter Chapter 5|13 pages
Shifting Mirrors: Re-Theorizing the Female Gaze and Voice
chapter Chapter 6|17 pages
Recuperable Traditions, Contemporary Voices
part 4|35 pages
Beyond Painting
chapter Chapter 7|14 pages
Meta-Pictures and Meta-Languages: Philosophy and Ekphrasis
chapter Chapter 8|10 pages
Inside the Image: Ekphrasis in Film and TV
chapter Chapter 9|9 pages
Ideal Points, Virtual Truths: Poems about Photographs
part 5|16 pages
Ekphrasis and Creative Writing