Student Number : 0303239 - MA research report - School of English - Faculty of Humanities / This component comprises a volume of ekphrastic poems followed by a theoretical postscript. The poems were influenced either by individual works of art or by a particular artist’s work in general. The postscript examines the nature of ekphrasis. It also discusses the connection between my poems and the artworks that inspired them relating this to existing ekphrastic theory and to my writing process. The poems appear in a separate collection followed by reproductions of the relevant works.

abstract: This creative thesis is a work of narrative and lyric poetry. Death and Nature are two complex themes that emerge frequently in the poems and work as well across the breadth of the manuscript. The speakers' perspectives vary and are indebted to two sub-genres of poetry, namely--The Poetry of Witness, and Ekphrastic Poetry. Their psycho-analytic underpinnings are at times indisputable, and at other times, purely subjective. Many poems address political and human rights issues in the Middle East, and in the rest of the world. It is here that the poems depend and reveal flexibility with diction and varying structures. Overall, the poems reflect and investigate possible restraints and choices, both internally by the details and images, and externally by multiple experiments with free verse forms. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Creative Writing 2012

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This thesis analyses ekphrastic passages in the short stories of the Danish writer Karen Blixen. It points out the various definitions of ekphrasis while drawing on a wider conception of this phenomenon which is based on the current intermediality discourse. The texts are analysed on two levels: 1) Ekphrastic thematization, i.e., the transfer of content elements from visual arts to literature, especially regarding landscape painting, portrait and still life. 2) Ekphrastic realization, i.e., the practical use of painting techniques in literary texts, such as the choice of colours or the depiction of light. The results of the analyses indicate a diversity of forms of ekphrasis in Blixen's works, be it in terms of scope, form or integration into the text structure. The results also point out the importance of the so-called pictorial model concept in the author's poetics.

The submitted thesis focuses on the use of the traditional ancient genre of ekphrasis (a specific form of description of a work of visual artefact) in modern literature. Individual interpretative perspectives are demonstrated using selected works of Czech poetry and prose from the 19th, 20th and 21th centuries (by Jaroslav Vrchlický, Julius Zeyer, Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, Alois Jirásek, Jaroslav Durych, Jaroslav Maria, František Langer, Bohumil Hrabal and Miloš Urban). The metodological focus primarily anchors the thesis in the theory of intermediality (Werner Wolf, Irina Rajewsky); concepts from art theory and visual studies are also applied (e.g. Norman Bryson?s distinction ?the gaze? ? ?the glance?). The thesis first outlines the context of the history of ekphrasis as a rhetorical category and as a genre, the existing research on ekphrasis, and the problems of defining ekphrasis as verbal representation of a visual representation. It considers the distinction between actual and notional ekphrasis (John Hollander) from the point of view of the literary theory, and also employs the category of the pictorial model (Tamar Yacobi). The next chapter examines the role of the beholder in ekphrasis, first from the point of view of his position in the fictional world (e.g. the observer is a character in a fictional world and at the same time projects himself into the ?fictional world? of the visual representation), and second in distinguishing the mode of description and the mode of interpretation. The thesis also defines some specific ekphrastic techniques and gestures, for example: How can the act of perceiving and observing a visual representation be realized in the structure of its verbal representation? How does a static description become dynamic through direct integration of ekphrasis into the structure of the narrative ? into the structure of a particular scene (microstructure of an action) or the plot as a whole (macrostructure of a story)? What are the roles and functions of ekphrastic passages in the framework of the text as a whole (ekphrasis need not be simply a pause in the narration which is easy to eliminate)? Finally, how can the verbal medium, using its own means, imitate or simulate the media-specific techniques of another type of art.

The object of this thesis is to analyze the presence of the pedagogical ekphrastic elements in the novel The Story of The Predestined Pilgrim and his Brother Reprobate by Father Alexandre de Gusmmão. In the past this novel has been an obscure masterpiece outside the circle of those who study early Portuguese language works. In the last half century there has been a crescendo of the study of this novel as more scholars have taken an interest in the pilgrimage motif and in particular using this novel in comparative literature. A monumental contribution to bring this novel out of obscurity is the recent publication of its English translation by Christopher C. Lund. His efforts make this work more accessible to students and scholars who will become enlightened by its contents. His English translation has been used exclusively and is the enabling factor for this study of pedagogical ekphrastic elements contained in the novel. Pilgrimage is a frequent motif in seventeenth-century literature. His pilgrimage is the narrative of two polar opposite brothers whose journeys take them to six cities. As they traverse these cities, the brothers make choices that lead them to their final destinations of Jerusalem, the symbol of heaven, and Babylon, which depicts hell. Gusmmão emphasizes early on that their choices will cause them to be separated forever. Ekphrases are used to enrich and capture the reader's attention to the teachings of Gusmmão through the choices placed before each brother. Gusmmão employs whit, charm, characterization, ekphrases, vignettes, and allegory, with the poignant pedagogical objective to cause the reader to decide if he or she is a predestined or a reprobate and would be satisfied with the inevitable outcomes. I review the socio-historic presence of the Jesuits in Brazil as well as their remarkable pedagogical influence. Ekphrasis is studied as to its origins and its longevity throughout the centuries and how scholars have defined ekphrasis. The essence of this thesis is the extraction and examination of two hundred and forty-one ekphrastic passages from the novel and the analysis of their pedagogical value along with their pictorial elements. It is important to note that the findings of this study loudly affirm Gusmão's use of pedagogical ekphrastic elements as they were detected abundantly in all but ten of the sixty-three chapters included in his novel. The literary richness created by Gusmão's use of ekphrasis so predominantly throughout his novel is indicative of his stature as a pedagogical literary master.

This book is a monograph about Anna Świrszczyńska’s poetry. It may be described as one woman’s attempt to read another woman’s literary work by taking into account established canons as well as the tools of feminist literary analysis. Part One begins with a discussion of Świrszczyńska’s biography (Chapter One). It then moves on to an overview of critical (mainly male) reactions to Świrszczyńska’s work (Chapter Two), with special regard to Czesław Miłosz’s contribution to its interpretation and popularization (Chapter Three). In Part Two there are three principal discussions: 1) of Anna Świrszczyńska’s early work Wiersze i proza [Poems and Prose] (1936), in which the poet develops her specific female view of European art and culture as disintegrated into incongruent fragments. Her premonition of the apocalypse, which is soon to be fulfilled in the events of World War II, finds its expression in the poet’s desperate attempts to unite the fragments of a shattered culture into individualized versions of myths (Chapter Four); 2) of the collection Budowałam barykadę [Building the Barricade] (1974), in which what is most crucial to the poet (biographically and poetically) is expressed – the encounter with human suffering in an inhuman world. Following this, her poetic view of the mortal body exposed to suffering under an empty sky becomes a well established motif in her work (Chapter Five); 3) of the collection Jestem baba (1972), in which Świrszczyńska introduces into poetry, by making the non-poetical “baba” her lyric heroine, the “outlawed feminine” and, as a result, revolutionizes the language of poetry and poetic representation, which leads in turn to liberating herself from the hegemony of the totalizing male gaze. In this way her anti-world is created (Chapter Six). The “world” is understood here as a male term – one might say that Świrszczyńska creates a “woman’s anti-world” as a place where the woman herself has to regain the right to name things according to her own terms.

<p dir="ltr">With a particular focus on her twelve years of partnership with Ulay, the life and work of performance artist Marina Abramović are taken as ekphrastic subjects in a research-based poetics reflecting the author’s understandings of art, love and belonging. In dynamic movements of literary form throughout the manuscript, <i>Nude Imperative</i> makes a restless inquiry into the meaning of embodiment as a person in language, desire, and diaspora, the nature of relation between this individual self and the intimate other, and the limits of these human connections; the limits of love.</p>

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