Ekphrasis: Art, Description and Religion

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course explores the rich traditions of description - ekphrasis - from Greco-Roman antiquity into the middle ages. It tackles texts (both prose and verse) in order to establish the ramifications of a genre in the European tradition, and its applications in particular to visual culture and religion. There will be opportunity in the final paper to range beyond these into questions of comparative literature, art (history) writing, religious imagination and ekphrasis in all periods or contexts, as well as into the use of images or films as themselves forms of descriptive response. The course is intended for graduates but interested undergraduates are very welcome. It will be examined on the basis of a paper, due on a subject to be agreed and on a date to be agreed at the end of the Spring quarter.