Blake Clinton Y.

Dy
ID# 10645837
Midterm Examination:
Test I.
1. Notional Ekphrasis – A poem of Notional Ekphrasis represents a work of art that does not actually
exist, being entirely a construct of language. Examples of this include Homer’s the Shield of Achilles
which has no lack of artful description and Book 3 of Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale where the temples
of Diana, Mars and Venus are described in exacting detail despite having no real life counterpart.
2. Representational Friction in Ekphrasis – This is the conflict between the signifier, the material medium
of presentation and the signified, the object or figures to be represented. It is the sense of difference
between the subject matter of a work of art and the medium. This is shown in the Shield of Achilles
where the poem does not ask us to only imagine the scenes on the shield but also makes us conscious
of the material used in crafting the scene. The poem does not ask us to imagine real earth or real waves
but rather the gold that has been made to resemble those things.
3. Prosopopoiea – Dramatic personification or the giving voice to the mute inanimate object. The poem
employing this type of ekphrasis gives sound or speech to the inanimate subject matter. This can be
seen in the Last Duchess where the speaker who at first seems to be the viewer (the Duke) or his
companion is in all actuality the Duchess depicted in the painting. This can also be seen in Homer’s
Shield of Achilles where though he gives no speech he gives indication of sound and song in the scenes
depicted.
4. Indicium Sceleris – The Indicium Sceleris is an ambiguous sign (it is not stated explicitly whether it
was a written account or a graphic depiction) woven into the cloth used by Philomela to communicate
the wrongs perpetrated on her by Tereus to her sister Procne. This phenomenon is also displayed in the
weaving contest between Arachne and Athena, where the mortal weaver depicts the rapacious attitudes
of gods toward mortal women
5. Ekphrasis – The verbal representation of a visual representation. It is the use of language to represent a
work of art (The Shield of Achilles) that does not exist or to give voice, life or action to a static artwork
(My Last Duchess, Ozymandias and An Ode to a Grecian Urn).
6. Ut Pictura Poesis – “As is painting so is poetry.” A statement from Horace’s Ars Poetica that means to
tell us that both painting and poetry should not be segregated as being one art that is superior to
another but rather appreciated as two equal art forms.
7. Negative Capability – A theory by John Keats. He believes that people, most especially poets, may
have the ability to accept that not everything can be resolved, that truths found in the imagination have
access to holy authority and may not necessarily be understood. Negative Capability is exhibited when
the human is capable of accepting uncertainties without reaching for fact and reason. This concept was
expressed in his poem, Ode to a Nightingale and Keats himself holds up Shakespeare as one of the
people who epitomized this concept.
8. Iconophobia – Distaste for visual art due to the belief of the superiority of the word based primarily on
the visual art’s ability to provoke emotions in the viewers, displacing the orator as Philomela’s
Indicium Sceleris does to Tereus or Phyrene’s nude display to her Athenian jurors.
9. Ekphrastic Hope – An idea proposed by W.J.T Mitchell as part of his tripartiate understanding of
ekphrasis. Ekphrastic hope opposes the indifference between verbal and material in a moment of
inspiration or metaphor or imagination where the gap between the verbal and the visual is somehow
closed by a means that can only be described as ekphrasis. The end goal being to able to write of an
object in such a way that someone might encounter them verbally but still be impressed by the visual.
10. Romantic Ekphrasis – It is the expression of profound ambivalence toward the timeless nature of
visual art in diametric opposition to the idea of transcendence or the timelessness of the visual art. The
reverence for the timeless beauty or sublimity of the icon is checked by words that undermine its
authority. The words reveal its material’s impermanence and expose its petrifying impact on the
narratable flow of life. This is most pointedly illustrated in Byron’s Don Juan where while he praises
the statue as a having a beauty that may be admired that beauty is something that must be eventually
relinquished by anyone truly committed to life.
Test II.
1. James Heffernan in "Museum of Words," citing Thibaud in Le Bouclier d'Achille says "even if the
shield symbolizes the Mycenean civilization that Achilles sets out to defend, even if Hephaestus'
masterpiece is metaphorically interchangeable with Achilles himself, who becomes the shield for the
whole Greek world, the shield's capacity to represent and thus perpetuate that world is compromised by
the depth of its very involvement in moral vicissitudes-- in human contingency." This so because
fundamentally the shield itself is an instrument of battle, an object to be borne in combat to withstand
the blows from the bear’s foes and is eventually pierced by the spear of Hector. Though it bears scenes
embossed upon it that depict a respite from war it is still very much an instrument of war. Though
Achilles is deemed to be the protector of Mycenean civilization the fact that he must protect himself
with imagery that essentially exposes that which he protects to the enemy speaks of the shield’s
(and Achilles) fundamental inability to defend the Mycenean way of life (1993:11).
2. Patricia Kleindiest Joplin in "The voice of the shuttle is ours" says those political marriages like that of
Procne to Tereus always requires the sacrifice of a daughter and the shedding of her blood. In Ovid's
"Metamorphosis" Tereus is a geminus coniunx, a double husband. Joplin cites that the graphic tale
woven by Philomela profoundly threatens the political order of Greece, and more precisely Athens.
This so because Athens being a patriarchal society is one that has a profound sense of Iconophobia. It
is a fear that pictures (though in this case a woman’s weaving) given their ability to solicit the rawest
oft emotions would displace the power of the orator, the bastion of the word and of male supremacy.
Philomela’s Indicium Sceleris represent a threat to both its gender hierarchy and its political survival.
The former through the displacement of the orator, allowing the female voice which struggles to be
 heard to speak and the latter by the disruption of the alliance between Pandion and Tereus and thus
Athens survival is place in jeopardy (1993: 47-49).
3. Keats' poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" actualizes the potential that ekphrasis has always possessed-- the
capacity to question and challenge the art it ostensibly salutes. He accomplishes this through his use of
language that aims to both critique and honor the concept of transcendence that invariably
accompanies every piece of graphic art but he not only confines himself to critiquing the urn but goes
on to critique contemporary (at the time) ekphrasis itself. Through the poem he demonstrates that
ekphrasis can both represent and misrepresent a work of art in that while a narrative may produce a
fraction of the work’s beauty it also eventually overrides what beauty can be experienced forever. The
poem does so in presenting us with the conflict of the grieving lover whom given the capacity and told
not to grieve by the poem losses his transcendent quality. Through this the poems asks as to choose
whether we wish to have the narratable truth of passionately mutable life or the immutable beauty of
graphic art (1993: 107-115).
4. Shelley's sonnet "Ozymandias" questions and argues against what Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" takes
wholly for granted: the imperishability of visual art. Shelley does so through the poem’s paradoxical
envoicing of statue of Ozymandias who boasts of his greatness yet is blissfully unaware of the ruin and
emptiness that surrounds him and the statue’s state of gradual dissolution. Whereas Keats believes his
to Urn to survive the ages, Shelley foresees the eventual decay of the statue. She most pointedly
illustrates this through the subject matter itself which when erected so long ago was meant to represent
enduring political power yet now lies in a state of defiant ruination, its legs standing proudly yet its
face smashed in half, a prelude of things to come. Through this she illustrates that material art’s claim
to permanence is but a fallacy (1993: 115-117).

Bibliography:
Heffernan, James W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. 1993.