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Verbal and Non-Verbal Facets of Metaekphrastic Writing: a Cognitive Study of John Berger's Essays On

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Verbal and Non-Verbal Facets of Metaekphrastic Writing: a Cognitive Study of John Berger's Essays On © 2020 Lege artis. Language yesterday, today, tomorrow Research article LEGE ARTIS Language yesterday, today, tomorrow Vol. V. No 2 2020 VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL FACETS OF METAEKPHRASTIC WRITING: A COGNITIVE STUDY OF JOHN BERGER'S ESSAYS ON VISUAL ART1 Olga Vorobyova, Tetyana Lunyova* Kyiv National Linguistic University, Kyiv, Ukraine *Corresponding author Bibliographic description: Vorobyova, O. & Lunyova, T. (2020). Verbal and non-verbal facets of metaekphrastic writing: A cognitive study of John Berger's essays on visual art. In Lege artis. Language yesterday, today, tomorrow. The journal of University of SS Cyril and Methodius in Trnava. Trnava: University of SS Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, 2020, V (2), December 2020, p. 335-381. ISSN 2453-8035 Abstract: Addressing the cognitive poetic status of ekphrasis, this paper suggests the notion of metaekphrasis to account for verbal and non-verbal essayistic contexts that surmount ekphrasis as a literary representation of a work of art. For this purpose, the paper examines John Berger's essays for eliciting his vision of writing about art in order to reveal the rationale for his metaekphrastic passages through interpreting verbal and non-verbal (visual) instantiations of this underlying script. Key words: ekphrasis, metaekphrasis, verbal, visual, cognitive poetics, essay, visual art. 1. Introduction This paper approaches metaekphrasis as an instance of intermediality, traced in John Berger's essays on art (2015) and viewed from a cognitive poetic standpoint. Since ekphrasis is understood either as some correspondence between verbal and non-verbal (paintings, sculpture, music, dance) artefacts (Schaefer & Rentsch 2004: 132) or as "a central concept in studies that deal with the relation between word and image, and 1 This paper is part of the project "Linguistics of Intermediality and the Challenges of Today: Polymodality of Mind, Intersemioticity of Text, Polylogue of Cultures" (Grant of Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, UkrRISTI Registration Number 0119U100934). 335 ISSN 2453-8035 between literature and art" (Koopman 2014: 3), in recent studies it has been respectively interpreted in a double way: as a form of intermediality (Koopman 2014: 3; Schaefer & Rentsch 2004: 132) or as a functional component of intermediality (Юхимук 2015: 156). In our study we bring together our experience of analysis of Berger's ekphrasis (Луньова 2018; Lunyova 2020a; 2020b; Lunyova in print) and research into intermediality (Vorobyova 2017b; 2020; Vorobyova in print) to approach both essayistic ekphrasis and metaekphrasis as forms of intermediality and regard them as semantic phenomena that arise through the interaction of the verbal and the visual in the personalised discussion of art. As such the paper aligns with the three topical domains of current research: i) studies into the interconnection between the verbal and the visual ‒ an area that has currently been of great interest to scholars in a range of related disciplines such as linguistics (Anthonissen 2003; Pagano et al. 2018; Panasenko 2020), rhetoric (Gross 2009), and neuroscience (Amit et al. 2017; Amit et al. 2019), ii) the burgeoning domain of intermediality studies (Brosh 2015; Bruhn 2016; Chrzanowska-Kluczewska 2017; Vorobyova 2017b; 2020; Vorobyova in print; Wolf 2011), as well as iii) research dealing with reflexivity, awareness, and self- consciousness in language use (Gnezdilova 2017; 2018; Tykhomyrova 2018). Berger's essays contain numerous cases of ekphrasis, viewed as descriptive (mimetic) representations of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs, as, a verbal ekphrasis from the essay about Piero della Francesca1, e.g.: (1) "Look, for instance, at the overall composition of his work. Its centre […] is Christ's hand, holding his robe as he rises up" (Berger 2015, p. 14). However, Berger's writings are not limited to ekphrastic representations of artworks. Rather, Berger expounds on the topics related to works of art represented ekphrastically. Thus, the same essay contains the author's ponderings over the difficulties of being an artist. Such and similar contexts which derive from ekphrasis and reach beyond an artwork representation, are designated here by the term 'metaekphrasis' which we take from several sources discussed further in this paper 336 ISSN 2453-8035 (Armas 2005: 22; Webb 2009/ 2016: 185-186), e.g.: (2) "… I was thinking about the scientist's social predicament. And it struck me then how different the artist's predicament is" (Berger 2015, p. 12). While there were successful attempts to study ekphrasis via cognitive poetic methodology (Андреева & Белобородько 2016; Ізотова 2018: 285-290; Panagiotidou 2017; Verdonk 2005; Vorobyova 2017b), metaekphrasis, to our knowledge, has not yet been described in cognitive poetics terms. It has only been tackled in a cursory way in literary-historic studies (Armas 2005: 22; Webb 2009/ 2016: 185-186). 2. Ekphrasis: The range of phenomena and the scope of the term The term ekphrasis is of Greek origin (History and etymology for ekphrasis, s.a.), where ékphrasis means "description", being derived from ekphrad-, stem of ekphrázein "to tell over, recount, describe" (from ek- + phrázein "to point out, show, tell, explain" of uncertain origin) + -sis (ibid.). The earliest ekphrasis as a specific phenomenon is traced back to Homer's "Iliad" (Heffernan 1991: 298; Koopman 2014: 2). The most frequently referred to ekphrastic passage is found in Book 18 of the "Iliad" and deals with Hephaestus forging a new elaborately decorated shield for Achilles (Koopman 2014: 2). As a term, ekphrasis appeared in late-antique rhetorical handbooks, known collectively as "Progymnasmata" (Chinn 2007: 267; Koopman 2014: 3; Webb 2009/ 2016: 17). In the ancient world the meaning of this term was broader in comparison with its modern interpretation (Chinn 2007: 256; Koopman 2014: 3; Webb 1999: 8) as it encompassed "descriptions of all types, usually characterised by the common feature of vividness (enargeia in Greek; evidentia or perspicuitas in Latin)" (Chinn 2007: 256). The contemporary, narrower definition of ekphrasis (Koopman 2014: 3) is that of "the rhetorical or literary description of works of visual art" (Chinn 2007: 256) or just 337 ISSN 2453-8035 "description of a work of art" (Webb 1999: 9-10). As Goehr put it: "before it became attached rather too exclusively to the 'arts', ekphrasis was part of a much broader range of political, legal, and pedagogical exercises" (2010: 390). Following Schaefer and Rentsch (2004: 137), Koopman elucidates the main difference between these two definitions of ekphrasis: "in the late-antique definition ekphrasis is characterised by its effect, whereas according to the modern definition it is the reference to an artefact that characterizes ekphrasis" (2014: 3) (italics [sic]). The main characteristics of ekphrasis in the ancient tradition was "the ability of ekphrastic language to create the illusion that the absent object of description is actually present in discourse" (Chinn 2007: 267). Hence, ekphrasis "was defined in terms of its impact on an audience" (Webb 1999: 12), thus focusing "on the impact of speech acts" (Goehr 2010: 395). For ancient rhetoricians ekphrasis "could be a description of a person, a place, even a battle, as well as of a painting or sculpture" (Webb 1999: 8). The contrast between the ancient and the modern definitions of ekphrasis comes down to the following: as for the ancients "works of art as a category are of no particular importance" (ibid., 11), contemporary scholars take ekphrasis as a "description of works of art" (ibid., 9-10, 11, 13). Commenting on the specificity of the ancient approach to ekphrasis, Webb claims: "And even though highly polished and sophisticated descriptions of paintings or artifacts, like Philostratos' Imagines, or the Shield of Achilles, were classified as 'ekphraseis' in antiquity, the technical writers on ekphrasis hardly evoke discussion of the visual arts, or the special questions raised by their translation into a verbal medium" (1999: 8). Modern interpretations of ekphrasis are either traced to the late nineteenth century (Goehr 2010: 397) or attributed to Spitzer who, in 1955, suggested the definition of ekphrasis as "the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art" (1955: 207) while analysing Keats' "Ode on a Grecian urn", which has become a representative example of ekphrasis in its new interpretation when ekphrasis began to be viewed as "description of a work of art" (Webb 1999: 10). 338 ISSN 2453-8035 The difference between the late-antique and modern approaches to ekphrasis becomes evident in the reception of Homer's famous description of the shield of Achilles. While in "Progymnasmata" this episode is given as an example of a specific kind of ekphrasis (ekphrasis of process) (Chinn 2007: 276, 277), the modern tendency is to present this description as the first example of ekphrasis in Western literature (ibid., 276), i.e. ekphrasis in its modern narrow understanding. Goehr contrasts modern ekphrasis and ancient ekphrasis in the following way: "Modern ekphrasis focuses on works that bring other works to aesthetic presence; ancient ekphrasis focused on speech acts that brought objects, scenes, or events to imaginary presence" (2010: 397) (italics [sic]). The divergences between ancient and modern understandings of ekphrasis are summarised in Table 1, the common feature for both being the focus upon the medium of ekphrasis, i.e. ekphrastic means ‒ verbal language.
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