Ekphrasis

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.1: Greek Writing and Culture: Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial, -800--100.
Vol. editors: Jonathan Burgess (University of Toronto), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Vaios Liapis (Open University of Cyprus), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Mali Skotheim (Ashoka University), Laura Swift (The Open University)

Domains

Poetic/ rhetorical term

Dates

Date of occurrence -010

Places

Ancient Greece (Location)
Ancient Rome (Republic & Empire) (Involved)

Resources

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The critical term Ekphrasis, derived from the Greek

ecphrasis

meaning

description

, originates with Greek Dionysius of Halicanarssus who taught rhetoric in Rome from 30 to 8 BCE and was a leading exponent of aesthetic and critical theory. Ekphrasis was part of the training of students to make such oral descriptions as seem to make subjects vividly present to the hearer. Appropriate subjects included people, actions, seasons, places and events. Classical Greek literature had also included moments where the narrator vividly evoked the perception of a work of art, as when Homer describes the shield of Achilles in the

Iliad

, Book 18. l. 483-608, and Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE), a contemporary of Dionysius, offered a fine example of ekphrasis in his description of the tapestries of Minerva and…

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214 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Ekphrasis". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 May 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1669, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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