Ekphrasis and poetry

Kennedy, David

Abstract

The ekphrastic poem, like its close cousin the elegiac poem, is more a mood or method of working than a mode with a set of distinctive, clearly defined characteristics. This chapter aims to complement the chapter on theory by James Heffernan by surveying some features of ekphrastic poetry. To do this, it proposes an ekphrastic canon comprising poems by Keats, Auden and Ashbery. The chapter proposes that the ekphrastic poem is a matter of making judgements and of using the ekphrastic object work as a means of justifying its own existence as a separate work in its own right. The second half of the chapter offers a detailed discussion of Maggie O’Sullivan’s sequence Tonetreks as a way of understanding how this works in practice.

• Publication Date: 2015
• Journal: Handbook of intermediality
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 82-91
• Series Title: Handbooks of English and American studies
• Book Title: Handbook of Intermediality
• Chapter Number: 4
• ISBN: 9783110311075
• APA6 Citation: Kennedy, D. (2015). Ekphrasis and poetry. In G. Rippl (Ed.), Handbook of Intermediality, 82-91. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110311075-006
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110311075-006
• Keywords: Ekphrastic poem, Critical ekphrasis, Ekphrastic encounter, Body, Desire
• Publisher URL: Full details of the published book are available at https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110311075
• Copyright Statement: © 2015, Walter de Gruyter GmbH