Scripta 9_2_link_final.pdf - Uniandrade

known as ekphrasis. The term is used to define verbal descriptions of nonverbal
signs, frequently in form of poetry. Concerning the universe of
intermediality, Irina Rajewsky (2005) claims that ekphrasis is an intermedial
phenomenon within the larger category “intermedial references” (p. 52).
James Heffernan (1991) proposed the definition: “verbal
representation of graphic representation” (p. 299). However, this definition
“emphatically excluded as objects of ekphrastic representation all nonrepresentational
paintings and sculptures and all architecture” (CLÜVER,
1998, p. 13). Claus Clüver, therefore, proposes to define ekphrasis as “the
verbal representation of a real or fictitious text composed in a non-verbal
sign system” (1997, p. 26) which, according to him, is a broader, yet less
elegant, definition. In a later article (2007), he defines ekphrasis as “verbal
representations of texts composed in non-verbal sign systems” in order to
broaden the forms of representations to media other than painting and
sculpture (p. 23-25). Clüver’s proposal, therefore, opens the door to the
study of ekphrasis within different semiotic systems.
For Tamar Yacobi (1995), ekphrasis, “the literary evocation of spatial
art, is an umbrella term that subsumes various forms of rendering the
visual object into words” (p. 600). Although her view limits ekphrasis to
literary texts and visual arts, Yacobi develops a helpful chart showing
ekphrastic relations between visual sources, which she calls a representation
of artworks, and its verbal targets, which she calls the artworks representation
in literature. The former is one-to-one, from a visual source to
a verbal target, i.e., the traditional ekphrastic relation, with one artwork
inspiring one verbal text typically in the form of poetry. The latter is from
one to many; it takes place when one image is the source of many verbal
texts, such as the dozen poems inspired by Breughel’s Icarus. This relationship
is “usually considered the limit of ekphrasis.” Its reverse is the many-to-one
relation – a kind of “cumulative text … that covers a group of works
produced by some artist, often as an act of homage.” The last one, the
many-to-many relation takes place “when a writer, a school, or an age
revisits a certain image common to various paintings” (p. 602-03). I should
also mention the ‘pregnant moment.’ It is the moment right before the
climax of the novel which stimulates the reader’s imagination in a two-way
interart movement between source artwork and verbal target (p. 612).
Another contribution is from the French theoretician Liliane Louvel.
She proposes seven levels of pictorial saturation culminating in ekphrasis
(LOUVEL, 2001, p. 175-89). In two of her articles, Peindre les nuages pour
Scripta Uniandrade, v. 9, n. 2, jul.-dez. 2011
14