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

paintings by Renoir with which the female protagonist Marianne is identified (to
the extent that she is called Marianne Renoir 56), yet, her unscrupulousness and
violence also jar with Renoir’s soft and tender female images.
Finally, markers indicate the occurrence of quotations within the text,
either overtly or covertly, making the quote explicit or implicit (Plett 11-12).
According to Poulton, an explicit quote occurs in Clint Eastwood’s Absolute
power, in which the camera pans across several paintings before stopping on a
painting by El Greco. This painting “receives a secondary quote as we see that it
is Eastwood’s character sitting in the National Museum sketching the El Greco.
[…] The positioning of Eastwood’s character in front of the El Greco informs the
viewer that this character is perhaps talented, discerning, absorbed and that he
may identify with the torment of the El Greco painting” (Poulton 64).
FOUR CATEGORIES OF EKPHRASIS IN LITERATURE AND FILM
In developing my own system of categories for comparing and
distinguishing types of ekphrasis, I have adapted the ideas and concepts of these
different approaches outlined above. My system comprises four categories that
are ample enough to be applicable to poetry, novel, drama, and film, yet different
enough to minimize overlaps, although I am aware that overlaps cannot always be
avoided. While these four categories are not on a scale or continuum, like
Torgovnick’s, they do imply increasing degrees of complexity. Thus, on the
whole, the categories are qualitative more than quantitative, that is, they account
56 Cf. Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le fou, trans. Peter Whitehead (London: Lorrimer Publishing Inc,
1985) 37.
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