Vision and Visualization in Literature: The Rhetoric of Enargeia

How does writing make us see? We will study rhetorical concepts of “vivid description” (enargeia, phantasia, evidentia) from ancient Greek and Roman theory and literary practice and follow their reception in later periods and literary traditions, including modern evaluations of their significance (all readings in English). Taking texts from poetry, historiography, philosophy, and elsewhere, we will explore “vividness” particularly in terms of tropes of persona-fashioning (prosōpopoeia) and subject-positioning, with attention to the ethical and ideological implications that that may entail, and explore its relations with such topics as ecphrasis, narratology, and spectacularity.