Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

has a similar goal and will adapt her categories to meet the more specific needs of
distinguishing and comparing ekphrasis in literary texts and films.
Perhaps one of the most detailed and widely applicable models for
distinguishing types of ekphrasis is Valerie Robillard’s intertextual approach.
Robillard proposes a “two-part system by which to categorize and articulate the
wide varieties of ekphrases” which range from “texts which contain unequivocal
re-presentations of specific artworks to those whose subtle references to the visual
arts might be excluded from discourse on ekphrasis altogether” (53). The first part
of this system is a “scalar model,” based on Manfred Pfister’s article “Konzepte
der Intertextualität” (Concepts of Intertextuality) which contains the criteria
communicativity (“the degree to which the artwork is marked in a text,” Robillard
57), referentiality (“the extent to which a poet actually uses an artwork in the
text,” 58), structurality (“the poet’s attempt to produce a structural analogue in a
picture”, 58) selectivity (“the density of pictorial elements which have been
selected” or “the transposition of certain topics, myths, or norms and conventions
of particular periods or styles of pictorial representation,” 59), dialogicity (“the
manner in which the poet creates a semantic tension between the poem and the
artwork by casting the latter in a new, opposing framework,” 59) and
autoreflexivity (the extent to which the writer “specifically reflects on and
problematizes the connection between […] his own medium and that of the plastic
arts,” 59).
In order to further distinguish degrees of ekphrasis, Robillard proposes a
“differential model” with three categories (61-62). Its central “attributive”
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