Representation Beyond Representation: Modes of Ekphrasis in Contemporary Narratives
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REPRESENTATION BEYOND REPRESENTATION: MODES OF EKPHRASIS IN CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVES By DORIS BREMM A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2007 1 © 2007 Doris Bremm 2 For my parents 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The members of my committee shaped this project in many critical ways. I thank my director Julian Wolfreys for his guidance and encouragement throughout the writing of this dissertation and my time at the University of Florida. I am also indebted to Alexander Alberro, Marsha Bryant, and Susan Hegeman for their invaluable suggestions, direction, and support. Before I came to the University of Florida, I have had several teachers whose enthusiasm for literature and art inspired me to consider graduate school in English. At the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn those teachers were Frank Kearful, Hiltrud Kier, and Rolf Lessenich. During my time as an exchange student at the University of Southern Mississippi I was fortunate enough to take several classes with Noel Polk who not only passed on to me his passion for William Faulkner but also his enthusiasm for teaching and close readings. His encouragement and interest in my work were crucial for my decision to become a teacher myself. I thank him for being a wonderful mentor and friend. I wouldn't have made it through the dissertation without the help of my friends who, over the past five years, have patiently listened to my ideas, read drafts, offered helpful suggestion, and so much more. In particular, I thank Sophie Croisy, Nataša Kovačević, and Jessica Livingston for their support and friendship. They have made my time in Gainesville truly special and I will miss them very much. Finally, I thank my family and friends in Germany. They have been supportive of my decision to pursue my Ph.D. in the United States from the very beginning, and their frequent emails, phone calls, and even a few visits often make me forget that we live on different continents. I am especially grateful to my parents, Eduard and Hedwig Bremm, for their unconditional support and love and for always believing in me. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................8 Definitions of Ekphrasis ...........................................................................................................9 The Development of the Ekphrastic Tradition .......................................................................16 Theoretical Framework and Chapter Outline .........................................................................20 2 REPRESENTATION BEYOND REPRESENTATION........................................................32 Tracy Chevalier: The Story Behind the Paintings ..................................................................40 A.S. Byatt: Perception, Painting, and Reality.........................................................................50 A.S. Byatt: A Still Life Comes Alive......................................................................................60 A.S. Byatt: We Are “Mocked With Art”................................................................................68 3 THE UNCANNY AND ART: PERCEIVING AND CONSTRUCTING THE SELF ..........72 Susan Vreeland: Uncanny Encounters with Art .....................................................................82 Peter Ackroyd: Overcoming the Gothic .................................................................................98 4 REVERSING GENDER CONVENTIONS .........................................................................108 Susan Vreeland: RevisITing the Story of Artemisia Gentileschi .........................................112 A.S. Byatt: Five Ways of Looking at Matisse's Nudes ........................................................121 Mary Gordon: Reversing the Roles ......................................................................................128 5 HISTORIOGRAPHY AND STORY-TELLING .................................................................136 John Banville: The Author as Creator ..................................................................................143 Julian Barnes: Turning Catastrophe into Art........................................................................145 Salman Rushdie: History and Story-Telling as Palimpsest ..................................................155 Peter Ackroyd: Spectral Connections...................................................................................162 Epigraph: Benjamin’s “Angel of History” ...........................................................................170 6 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................172 LIST OF REFERENCES.............................................................................................................175 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................183 5 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy REPRESENTATION BEYOND REPRESENTATION: MODES OF EKPHRASIS IN CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVES By Doris Bremm May 2007 Chair: Julian Wolfreys Major: English My work examines the role of contemporary forms of ekphrasis (writing about art) in narrative fiction as an important mode that problematizes representation and the status of the novel in the late 20th century. I analyze representations of visual art in novels by British and American authors as diverse as Peter Ackroyd, John Banville, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Tracy Chevalier, Mary Gordon, Salman Rushdie, and Susan Vreeland. The classical genre of ekphrasis has traditionally been associated with poetry rather than with prose and most of the criticism in this area focuses on its use in lyric texts as well. This is the first study that looks at ekphrasis in contemporary novels. I argue that these novels resolve the crisis of this “exhausted” genre by transferring the discussion of the problem of verbal representation to the description of paintings. As representations of representation, these novels are examples of metafiction that confront the crisis of the novel in the late twentieth century while overcoming it at the same time. Ekphrasis is a genre that has been defined as the verbal representation of visual representation and in the last decades a surprising number of authors have incorporated descriptions of art in their novels. More than simply referring to a painting in passing or using it as a metaphor, these authors place painting and writing about painting at the core of their novels. Ekphrasis functions as a mise-en-abyme for larger issues of the “postmodern” crisis of 6 representation and story-telling. One of the central questions I address is why these contemporary authors write novels about painting at a time when both the genre and the art form have been pronounced dead. I argue that these contemporary novelists move from re- presentation to forms of Darstellung (a presencing or staging) of possible stories behind the pictures they are describing. The study explores this concept thematically with each chapter corresponding to a different genre of painting: the still life, the portrait, the nude, and the history painting. Central concerns include perception and story-telling, identity, the reversal of ekphrastic gender conventions, and historiography. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Ekphrasis aims to be all of literature in miniature . it focuses on the interarticulation of perceptual, semiotic, and social contradictions within verbal representation. —W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory Works of art bring something new into the world rather than reflecting something already there. This something new is constitutive rather than being either merely representational or, on the other hand, a revelation of something already there but hidden. Works of art make culture. Each work makes different the culture it enters. —J. Hillis Miller, Illustration There are no rules. Everything is possible. —Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton This study analyzes representations of visual art in recent narrative fiction and concentrates on the role of ekphrasis in novels by British and American authors as diverse as Peter Ackroyd, John Banville, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Tracy Chevalier, Mary Gordon, Salman Rushdie, and Susan Vreeland. I argue that these novels resolve the crisis of this “exhausted” genre by transferring the discussion of the problem of verbal representation to the description of paintings. As representations of representation, these novels are examples of metafiction that confront the crisis of the novel in the late twentieth century while overcoming it at the same time. The opening epigraphs introduce the main arguments of this study and what, for me, are the principal concerns of the novelists in this study: first, ekphrasis is more than just writing about art but pertains to “all of literature”; second, representations create something new rather “than reflecting