Description - in Literature and Other Media (W. Wolf, 2007)

Description in Literature
and Other Media

Studies in Intermediality (SIM)
2
Executive Editor:
Walter Bernhart, Graz
Series Editors:
Lawrence Kramer, New York
Hans Lund, Lund
Ansgar Nünning, Gießen
Werner Wolf, Graz
The book series STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM), launched in

2006, is devoted to scholarly research in the field of Intermedia Studies
and, thus, in the broadest sense, addresses all phenomena involving
more than one communicative medium. More specifically, it concerns
itself with the wide range of relationships established among the various
media and investigates how concepts, of a more general character, find
diversified manifestations and reflections in the different media. The
book series is related to, and part of, the activities of the Intermediality
Programme of the Humanities Faculty at the Karl-Franzens-Universität
Graz/Austria.
STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM) publishes, generally on an annual

basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically assessing
the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and institutional
dimensions and prospects of Intermedia Studies on an international
scale: conference proceedings, university lecture series, collections of
scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on pertinent individual
topics reflecting more general issues.
Description
in Literature and Other Media
Edited by
Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Cover Illustration:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. Boulevard du Temple, Paris (c. 1838).
Daguerreotype (12,9 x 16,3 cm). Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2310-9
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents
Preface .............................................................................................. vii
Introduction
Werner Wolf
Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation: General
Features and Possibilities of Realization in Painting, Fiction and
Music .................................................................................................. 1
Description in Literature and Related (Partly) Verbal Media
Ansgar Nünning
Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description
in Fiction.............................................................................................91
Walter Bernhart
Functions of Description in Poetry ................................................. 129
Arno Heller
Description in American Nature Writing ....................................... 153
Doris Mader
The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’? ........ 179
Klaus Rieser
For Your Eyes Only: Some Thoughts on the Descriptive
in Film ............................................................................................. 215
Description in Visual Media
Johann Konrad Eberlein

Dürer’s Apocalypse as the Origin of the Western System
of Graphic Reproduction: A Contribution to the History of
Descriptive Techniques in the Visual Arts ..................................... 239
Götz Pochat
“Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium”? Description in the
Visual Arts ...................................................................................... 265
Susanne Knaller
Descriptive Images: Authenticity and Illusion in Early and
Contemporary Photography ............................................................ 289
Description in Music
Michael Walter
Musical Sunrises: A Case Study of the Descriptive Potential
of Instrumental Music ..................................................................... 319
Notes on Contributors ..................................................................... 337

Preface
Intermediality studies in a broad sense, besides dealing with artefacts
that involve more than one medium, are also concerned with phenom-
ena that can be observed in several media and/or arts. This ‘trans-
medial’ perspective opens a rich mine of medial comparisons both
from a systematic and a historical perspective.
The present volume, the second in the series Studies in Intermediality,
continues this transmedial approach which already informed the first
volume, dedicated to Framing in Literature and Other Media (2006).
This time the transmedial phenomenon under scrutiny is description.
Description has traditionally been discussed as a monomedial and in-
deed monogeneric phenomenon from a decidedly monodisciplinary
perspective. It is a curious fact that even within literary studies, and
more precisely within narratology, description has received much less
attention than, for instance, narrativity. Indeed, in a recent introduc-
tion to narratology, Monika Fludernik’s Einführung in die Erzählthe-
orie (2006), this lack of critical attention concerning description was
again mentioned and further research in the field registered as an
important desideratum. The scholarly neglect of description is all the
more surprising in comparison to, e. g., much-researched narrativity,
as description also constitutes a major ‘semiotic macro-mode’ or
‘macro-frame’ which by far transcends the boundaries of narrative
texts, or even of literature in general.
One aim of the present volume is to contribute to filling this con-
spicuous research lacuna and to generally rekindle critical attention to
description as a major phenomenon which is in fact relevant not only
to novels and short stories but also, for instance, to lyric poetry, film,
the visual arts, and arguably even to music. The introductory essay in
this volume therefore offers a detailed theoretical discussion of de-
scription, which is from the very start conceived of as a transmedial
phenomenon applicable to more media than merely literature. The en-
suing contributions are dedicated to individual media both from a
theoretical and historical point of view.
The volume originated from a cycle of lectures held at the University
of Graz in the summer term of 2005 as a part of the Intermediality
Programme of the university’s Humanities Faculty and presents a se-
lection from the lectures given.
viii
The publication of this book would not have been possibly without
‘pooling’ the expertise of scholars from various fields, and it is there-
fore the editors’ principal duty to thank the contributors to the afore-
mentioned lecture series for their efforts. I would like to voice my
thanks also on behalf of co-editor Walter Bernhart, who gave invalu-
able support to the enterprise both in matters of organization and of
scholarly content. In addition, I would like to thank Ingrid Hable for
her valuable work in preparing the manuscript in the first phase of the
editing process, as well as Katharina Bantleon for taking over Ingrid
Hable’s task in the decisive later phase in such an expert and enthu-
siastic way.
Graz, July 2007 Werner Wolf

Introduction
Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation
General Features and Possibilities of Realization
in Painting, Fiction and Music
Werner Wolf
Description has traditionally been viewed from a monodisciplinary and mono-

medial (mostly literary) perspective. This introductory essay attempts to remedy
this one-sidedness from a mainly theoretical angle and paves the way for the dis-
cussion of descriptions in various media undertaken in the contributions to this
volume. The first, general, part of the essay highlights the transmedial relevance
of description. It presents some of the discursive contexts outside the arts and
media in which description occurs and which influence the meaning of the term,
before focussing on its use in literature and other media. The descriptive, like nar-
rative, generally appears as a cognitive (macro-)frame or semiotic macro-mode
which is realized in, or triggered by, concrete sign systems (texts, artefacts or parts
of these) to a higher or lower degree, according to their variable relations to proto-
types and their characteristic features. The transmedial nature of the descriptive
permits one to locate it within a typology of semiotic macro-modes, which not
only includes media and genres but also micro-level realizations since the descrip-
tive can occur on the macro-level of entire works as well as in parts of them. The
bulk of the essay’s first part is dedicated to the discussion of the characteristic
features (functional, content-related and formal/presentational ‘narratemes’) of the
descriptive as opposed, notably, to narrative, features that also function as triggers
of the corresponding frame in the recipient’s mind. All of these reflections lead to
a definition of description and serve as a basis for the second main part of the
essay, i. e. a survey, by means of concrete examples and media-specific reflec-
tions, of the descriptive potential of three media: painting, fiction, and instrumen-
tal music. In conclusion, a brief comparison of these media is made on the basis of
the findings of the previous discussion.
2 Werner Wolf
1. Introduction: The transgeneric and transmedial relevance of

description as a basic referential mode of organizing signs,
and its hitherto predominantly monodisciplinary and
monomedial discussion
Descriptions occur in very different forms and situations, as the fol-

lowing three examples illustrate (the first is a part of an imaginary
lecture course, the second part of an imaginary everyday conversation
among music lovers, the third is taken from a literary text):
Example 1: “In order to understand what ‘recursive embedding’
means, imagine one of those little, hollow dolls from Eastern Euro-
pean which open at their waists and contain a similar hollow doll that,
in turn, contains yet another doll on a smaller scale.”
Example 2: “There is a famous Mozart symphony whose name has
presently escaped me. Its last movement has a simple theme which
one can easily recognize if the first theme is whistled.” (whistles the
notes C-D-F-E)
Example 3: “If you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look at the
picture.” (Carroll 1865/1970: 124; see Illustration 1)
Illustration 1: “Gryphon” from: Carroll 1865/1970: 125
These variants of description illustrate at least two basic features of

the phenomenon under scrutiny: firstly, they show that the descriptive
– as also, for instance, narrative – is a common macro-mode of organ-
izing signs that can occur in everyday life as well as in various other
situations, text types and genres. Secondly, they demonstrate that in
Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation 3
order to describe one can use different media: all three examples in-
clude words, but in Example 2 there is additionally some sort of music
(whistling or humming the first theme of the fourth movement of
Mozart’s last symphony in C major, the so-called Jupiter Symphony),
while Example 3 employs an image.
Thus, description appears to be not only a transgeneric but also a
transmedial phenomenon, that is: a phenomenon that can occur in
more than one medium. The transmedial nature of description implies
notably that, in contrast to current views as epitomized by Jean-
Michel Adam (see 1993: 3), it goes beyond verbal media1. As ‘trans-
mediality’ is a variant of ‘intermediality’, description is a fitting ob-
ject for the kind of studies explored in the book series in which the
2
present volume appears, namely Studies in Intermediality . In fact, no
one would deny that paintings can describe – perhaps even better than
literary texts –, and who would not agree that film scenes can be
highly descriptive or that certain musical compositions – in particular
programme music and ‘symphonic poems’ – also attempt to describe?
Considering the obviously transmedial nature of the descriptive,
the current research situation is surprising. So far, descriptive phe-
nomena – where they have been discussed at all3 – have almost exclu-
1
One may object that this is disregarding the definition of the term ‘description’,
which in The New Oxford Dictionary of English is given as “a spoken or written re-
presentation or account of a person, object, or event” (Pearsall 1998: 499). ‘Descrip-
tion’ seems to be restricted to verbal media, if not to scribere, ‘writing’, alone. Yet, a
simple exercise in finding synonyms of ‘description’ in both English and German will
prove that an exclusive focus on verbal media is certainly too narrow. After all, in-
stead of ‘Beschreibung’ one can say ‘Schilderung’, and ‘description’ is arguably syn-
onymous with ‘portrayal’ and ‘depiction’ (for a possible differentiation between
‘description’ and ‘depiction’ see Walton 1990: 293-304, and below, chap. 3.1; from a
transmedial perspective I will, however, disregard this distinction and regard ‘descrip-
tion’ as including ‘depiction’). Thus, in both languages these synonyms include at
least the pictorial medium in the group of potentially descriptive media (‘Schilderung’
being derived from the activity of painting shields, ‘portrayal’ from portrait painting,
and ‘depiction’ from ‘pingere’, ‘to paint’).
2
For the definition of ‘transmediality’ as a sub-form of ‘intermediality’ see
Rajewsky (2000/2003: 363, and 2002: 206) and Wolf (2002b: 18f.). However, as part
of the Studies in Intermediality series, the present volume including this essay will
subsequently focus on the transmedial rather than on the transgeneric nature of de-
scription.
3
For a critical overview of research (up to the 1990s) and the neglect of description
see Lopes (1995: 8-19), and most recently Fludernik (2006: 131), who considers de-
scription a ‘lacuna’ in narratology.
4 Werner Wolf
sively been considered from a monomedial perspective, with literary

theory being most advanced in the field. Within literary theory, de-
scription has mostly found attention with reference to fiction, which
accounts for the tendency to discuss this phenomenon not only from a
monomedial but also from a monogeneric perspective.
This state of affairs is all the more surprising as a closely related
macro-mode of organizing signs, namely narrative, has received dis-
proportionately more attention and has been highlighted both from a
transgeneric and a decidedly intermedial or media-comparative point
of view over the past few years (cf. Nünning/Nünning 2002; Ryan, ed.
2004). Description, however, seems to have escaped scholars engaged
in the field of intermediality studies so far, and even within literary
studies description does not appear to be a key concept. This is per-
haps best illustrated by the fact that with the laudable exception of
Ansgar Nünning’s Metzlers Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie
(1998/2004) and the recent Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative
Theory (see Pflugmacher 2005) a surprising number of dictionaries of
literary terms do not even have an entry on description (cf. Preminger/
Brogan 1993; Hawthorn 1994; Beck/Kuester/Kuester 1998; Cuddon
1998; Murfin/Ray 2003). This unsatisfactory situation, worsened by
the circulation of sometimes rather unprecise notions of the descrip-
tive, has, however, one advantage: it provides an opportunity to sur-
vey a neglected field that is only waiting to be explored.
The present volume is intended as a contribution to filling the
aforementioned lacunae, thereby continuing a project which began
with a cycle of lectures, held at the University of Graz in the summer
term 2005 and which forms the basis of the present volume. It is
informed by a perspective on description that not only continues the
reflection on what description actually is, but also wants to do justice
to its transmedial nature by enabling scholars from different areas and
disciplines to focus on the descriptive from their particular points of
view. As a result of this innovative transmedial approach, the possi-
bilities, but also the limitations, as encountered by various media and
arts in the field of description, will hopefully emerge more clearly,
along with techniques and functions of description that are shared by
several media or exist as typical properties of individual media. In
some cases (notably film and audioliterature but to some extent also
lyric poetry) the innovative power of this transmedial approach also
becomes manifest in that it has led to survey territories which have
hardly ever been explored before with respect to description.
In the gestation of the present volume literary studies provided the

trigger for the transmedial project undertaken in it. In view of this
fact, and also of the leading state of literary research in the (alas, as
yet all too limited) field of descriptive studies, it will not come as a
surprise that literature is mentioned explicitly in the title of this vol-
ume (as well as in the title of the original lecture series). Nor will it
surprise that in the present essay literary theory and literary examples
will loom large. However, as far as this essay is concerned, literature
will only provide a basis and background for the general description
of typical features of the descriptive, which, in principle, could also
be explained with reference to other media, for instance film. My
choice of literature for the general survey of the phenomenon ‘de-
scription’ is thus not a sign of a hegemonial attitude on the part of a
literary scholar but motivated in part by the pragmatic fact that this
happens to be the area of my expertise, as well as by the even more
important fact that research is most advanced is this field. At any rate,
a conception of description will be aimed at that is open to further ap-
plication and thus transcends a merely literary, let alone narratolog-
ical, perspective4.
As the distinctive quality of what renders a system of signs de-
scriptive is by far not self-explanatory nor clear in research (including
literary theory), a theoretical discussion of description and the de-
scriptive is at any rate not amiss as the first part of the present essay.
As description shares some elements with narrative, while at the same
time often being sharply opposed to it, this alternative mode of organ-
izing signs will in the following repeatedly be used as a point of refer-
ence. I propose to focus, firstly, on the descriptive as a mental concept
or cognitive frame, secondly, on major contexts and functions of de-
scriptions, before, thirdly, exploring some general formal features and
the location of the descriptive within a typology of basic macro-
modes of organizing signs. I will, however, not be concerned with a
typology of description, as this aspect – which has hardly ever met
4
Considering the transmedial character of description it is in fact not advisable to
follow Bal’s claim that “[d]escriptions [...] must be placed and studied within a nar-
ratological model” (1981/1982: 105), for this leads to the idea that description is not
an independent macro-mode of representation (see ibid.: 144).
6 Werner Wolf
with a theoretical interest5 – is dealt with in Ansgar Nünning’s con-

tribution to this volume.
Based on the findings of the first, theoretical part of this essay, the
second part will give a comparative survey of the descriptive faculties
and limits of three media: painting, fiction, and music. Here, however,
the emphasis is only on a systematic ‘survey’, as these introductory
reflections shall not anticipate the ensuing contributions written by
specialists who consider various verbal and non-verbal media in much
more detail and mostly in the frame of individual case studies, in
particular: fiction, lyric poetry, (non-fictional) ‘nature writing’, audio-
literature, film, photography, the visual arts, and music. While all
contributors will also address historical aspects of descriptions, which
here as elsewhere form a crucial element of interpretation, the limita-
tions of a volume like this do unfortunately not permit extended over-
views of the development of description in individual media. Histor-
ical surveys of descriptive techniques and functions – notably with
reference to media other than (narrative) literature6 – must therefore
remain a desideratum for future research.
2. The descriptive in general: major contexts of the descriptive

as a cognitive frame, its characteristics, its location within
a typology of semiotic macro-modes, media, genres and
micro-level realizations, and its concretization in the
recipient’s mind
2.1. The descriptive as a cognitive frame

Everyone recognizes a description when seeing one, just as we do
when being confronted with a narration or a specimen of any other
discursive macro-mode. A glance at the following examples (Quota-
tions 1-4) of various macro-modes of organizing signs in verbal media
may activate, and thus show the existence of, this intuitive faculty
quite easily:
5
The analysis of descriptive forms is in fact a remarkably neglected field of theory,
for which Chatman’s rudimentary typology of descriptive variants in cinema (see
1990: chap. 3) is a rare exception.
6
For descriptions of nature in the history of English fiction see, e. g., Th. Kullmann
1995, and for description in French nineteenth-century literature see D. Kullmann
2004.
Quotation 1:
Beschreibung, im lit.wissenschaftlichen Sinn bezeichnet B. die auch als ‘De-
skription’ bezeichnete Schilderung und Ausgestaltung der fiktiven Welt eines
literar. Textes, in der sich die Handlung ereignet und die p Figuren agieren. Sie
steuert die leserseitige p Konkretisation der erzählten Welt und trägt damit we-
sentlich zum p Realismus-Effekt und zur p Illusionsbildung bei. Traditionell
vom p Erzähler geleistet, besteht die B. aus “potentiell ‘wertneutralen’ Informati-
onen über die Figuren, Handlungen und die fiktive Gesellschaft” sowie aus “An-
schauungsdaten, die den Figuren eine lokale und temporale deiktische Determi-
nierung in ihrer jeweiligen [p] Sprechsituation verleihen”. (Nünning, ed. 1998/
2004: 60)7
Quotation 2:
GRAZ
Kennzahl 0316
-- A --
A & A PEASTON, Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschbüro, Schörgelg Nr 6 [...]
A & L Beschaffungsmanagement GmbH, Eckertstr 1 [...]
A & M plus Bücherläden GmbH, Hans-Sachs-G 5 [...]
(Telefonbuch 2005/2006: 1)
Quotation 3:
The rambler who, for old association’s sake, should trace the forsaken coach-road
running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England,
would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some
extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or
fruit-bearing as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by their drip
and shade, their lower limbs stretching in level repose over the road, as though
reclining on the insubstantial air. At one place, where Rubdon Hill is crossed, a
bank slopes up to the trees on the left hand, while on the right spreads a deep and
silent vale. The spot is lonely [...]. (Hardy 1887/1998: 5)
7
‘Description, in the sense used in literary studies, d. denotes the depiction and
organization of the fictional world of a literary text in which the action takes place
and characters act. It regulates the reader’s concretization of the narrated world and
thus contributes essentially to the ‘reality effect’ as well as to the creation of aesthetic
illusion. Traditionally a function of the narratorial discourse, d. consists in ‘potential-
ly neutral (as to evaluation) information on the characters, the action and the fictional
society’ as well as in ‘sensory details which provide a spatial and temporal deictic
determination for the characters in their respective communicative situations.’ [My
translation]
8 Werner Wolf
Quotation 4:
At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter’s day, there stood a man
who had thus indirectly entered upon the scene from a stile hard by, and was tem-
porarily influenced by some such feelings of being suddenly more alone than
before he had emerged upon the highway. [...]
He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his
walking-stick. [...]
At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or seemed
likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of labouring wheels, and
the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became audible [...]. (Hardy 1887/1998: 5f.)
As one will doubtlessly have recognized, Quotation 3 is a description,

whereas Quotation 4 is the beginning of a narration (both quotes are
taken from the beginning of Thomas Hardy’s realistic novel The
Woodlanders [1887]); Quotation 1, however, is a dictionary defini-
tion, while Quotation 2 is a list of references (to be more precise, it is
a quotation from the 2005/2006 telephone directory of the city of
Graz, Austria).
What makes these modes of semiotic macro-organization so easily
recognizable, though? The reason is clearly that we have an ‘intuitive’
idea of basic forms of discourse organization stored in our minds8.
This points to the fact that ‘the descriptive’ – as well as narrative,
argument, definition and other semiotic macro-modes – is a mental
concept, or in contemporary cognitive terminology, a ‘cognitive
frame’. As such, it is, of course, a mental construct, not a free-float-
ing one, however, but one that is aimed at regulating specific forms of
organizing signs in various genres and media for specific purposes. It
therefore can be illustrated by prototypical examples and is recog-
nized owing to certain typical functions and other features. Frames
that correspond to prototypes have the advantage of being flexible
meta-concepts that fit given phenomena more or less. Thus, ‘descrip-
tivity’, the defining quality of the corresponding frame, is – like ‘nar-
rativity’ – a gradable phenomenon (cf. Sternberg 1981: 76). It has
‘fuzzy’ edges but a relatively clear centre.
Before describing this centre and its features, one should insert
two notes. The first concerns the usefulness of maintaining a concept
which has been questioned in a fundamental way. Thus, Ruth Ronen
has argued that description is a theoretical construct created by “the
need to define ‘the other’ of narration” and by the classificatory urge
8
This has also repeatedly been stated in research (cf. Lopes 1995: 20).
“of assigning the representation of objects to a distinct mode of

writing” (1997: 283f.) but that it is a construct which frequently can-
not be found in textual reality, where both phenomena tend to overlap.
Ronen therefore pleads for “giv[ing] up” the “opposition description –
narrative” (ibid.: 284). This plea is, however, to be rejected for sev-
eral reasons: Ronen constantly uses the concept of description herself
and, moreover, discusses it in comparison to narrative. This shows
that there is at least some practical need for this opposition and hence
for the notion of description as one of its terms, and be it only in order
to relativize it (and, one should indeed do so, for description is
certainly not only theoretically opposed to narrative but also, e. g., to
argument; moreover, there are cases – and media – in which narrative
tends to be based on description, although the extension of description
in these cases – as well as elsewhere – can, of course, vary). In
addition, the fact that in textual and medial practice there are over-
lapping zones between the descriptive and narrative is not an argu-
ment against maintaining the concepts as such, in particular if one
adopts a prototypical conceptualization that permits – and accounts
for – such fuzzy edges. Moreover, Ronen approaches the topic from
an exclusively narratological and monomedial perspective. From a
transmedial point of view, the usefulness of the distinction ‘narrative
vs. descriptive’ presents much fewer problems: thus, for instance,
home-videos representing landscapes which one has toured during
one’s holidays can clearly be classified as descriptive and at the same
time as non-narrative, while it is also possible to use the medium
‘video’ to represent stories, a usage in which the narrative function
would clearly be dominant, although a subdominant descriptive func-
tion would arguably never be completely absent.
The second preliminary note refers to terminology, more specifi-
cally to theoretically desirable distinctions and their almost unavoid-
able fuzziness in discursive practice. When discussing description,
one should in principle employ different terms in order to distinguish
the abstract concept or frame from its concrete manifestations. One
could, for instance, call the abstract cognitive frame ‘the descriptive’
(as opposed to ‘narrative’), while a realization of this frame in a con-
crete descriptive text, in illustrations etc. should be called ‘a descrip-
tion’ (as opposed to ‘a narration’). Yet, owing to the clumsiness of
the phrase ‘the descriptive’, ‘description’ tout court will also be used,
provided the reference to the frame and not merely to a concrete ex-
ample is clear. As a plurality of descriptions usually also manifest fea-
10 Werner Wolf
tures of ‘the descriptive’, the plural ‘descriptions’ may, in addition,

also be used for the explanation of general functions and features of
the descriptive.
2.2. Major contexts and basic functions of the descriptive

As ‘the descriptive’ is a macro-mode of organizing signs and thus a
mode of communication, its features mainly derive from certain basic
functions which one should therefore take into account in the first
place. Functions depend on contexts and systems within which they
exist, and contexts also provide the framework in which individual
frames are opposed to other frames. As for description, this frame
operates within contexts that include what interests us most, the arts
and media, but also many others. Since these other contexts may give
us valuable hints about the functions of the descriptive in literature
and other media, some of them should at least be mentioned.
The first two important contexts are the theory of science (Wis-
senschaftstheorie) and philosophy, where the term ‘description’ is
used in the sub-disciplines of logic and epistemology9. In logic, de-
scription has been used as a form of definition and consequently as a
form of verbal reference (basically, all of the initial Examples 1-3
could be used as illustrations of this point). According to a renowned
historical dictionary of philosophy, “definitio descriptiva” has since
classical antiquity been a way of defining an object by attributing a
matrix of characteristic qualities to it, qualities which individually
may also occur in other objects but whose combination is character-
istic only of the object in question (cf. Nobis/Kaulbach 1971: 839 and
with reference to the entry “Description” of the Encyclopédie, Adam
1997/2005: 81)10.
9
For earlier uses of descriptio in a religious and metaphysical sense see Nobis/
Kaulbach 1971: 838.
10
Bertrand Russell’s concept of the ‘definite description’ is another variant of the
link between description and the definition of, and hence reference to, a phenomenon
by mentioning defining properties. The basic idea of a ‘definite description’, as for-
mulated in Russell’s Principia Mathematica, is “that one and only one thing of a cer-
tain sort exists and that it has a certain property” (Encyclopedia Britannica CD-Rom,
s. v. “Analytic philosophy: Bertrand Russell”). For a critical view of description and
its emphasis on outer accidentals as “une définition moins exacte” from a neoclassical
perspective, which focusses on the general and essential, see Adam 1993: 6-9.
In a famous passage in Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuch-

ungen (no. 109), ‘description’ is employed in a different sense,
namely as part of a basically anti-metaphysical and language-centred
epistemological programme, in which description is emphatically
opposed to explanation11:
Alle Erklärung muß fort, und nur Beschreibung an ihre Stelle treten. Und diese
Beschreibung empfängt ihr Licht, d.i. ihren Zweck, von den philosophischen Pro-
blemen. Diese sind freilich keine empirischen, sondern sie werden durch eine
Einsicht in das Arbeiten unserer Sprache gelöst [...]. (Wittgenstein 1953/1968:
47)12
This opposition between ‘description’ and ‘explanation’ can also be
encountered in the use of ‘description’ in science and in the theory of
science, as defined in the following entry on description taken from
another dictionary of philosophy:
Beschreibung, Deskription, geordnete Darlegung eines Sachverhaltes mit dem
Zweck, eine klare und deutliche Vorstellung von ihm zu vermitteln. Die B. hält
sich an die Tatsachen, an das Was und Wie, während die Erklärung auch die
Ursachen zu geben versucht, das Warum und Weil. Das Verfahren der B.
(deskriptive Methode), die sich in der Regel der natürlichen Sprache bedient, ist
eine [...] Verfahrensweise der p Wissenschaft. (Schmidt/Schischkoff 1974: 64)13
As we can see here, description, in the sciences, and above all in the
natural sciences, serves the function of identifying phenomena and
of communicating information excluding explanation and evalua-
tion14. Concerning these functions in science (as in other non-literary
11
A further employment of description in philosophy is to be found in Russell’s e-
pistemology, where ‘description’ is used in order to set off a certain, namely indirect,
second-hand way of gaining knowledge (‘knowledge by description’) as opposed to
the direct means of acquiring ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ or actual experience of
sense data. Ultimately, knowledge by description, in Russell’s conception, can, how-
ever, also be traced back to sense data, and thus description is nonetheless linked to
empirical data, albeit indirectly so.
12
“We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.
And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical
problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by
looking into the workings of our language [...].” (Wittgenstein 1953/1968: 47e)
13
‘Description, ordered discussion of an issue with the purpose of transmitting a
clear and distinct idea of it. D. is centred on facts, on the questions of ‘what?’ and
‘how?’, while explanation also tries to give the reasons, to answer the questions of
‘why’ and ‘wherefore?’. The method of d. (descriptive method), which, as a rule, uses
natural languages, is a modus operandi of the sciences.’ [My translation]
14
According to Kötter/Inhetveen (1996: 7), the focus of contemporary theory of sci-
ence is rather on theories of explanation than on theories of description.
12 Werner Wolf
fields), Michel Beaujour has, however, rightly pointed out that de-
scription as a verbal practice has played “second fiddle to pictures of
all kinds” (1981: 50) ever since techniques of pictorial reproduction
have rendered illustrations in books and other print media relatively
cheap and easily available. In spite of this media shift, the allegedly
objective quality of description has remained a constant in scientific
and other pragmatic uses, where it is regarded as a result of the collec-
tion and subsequent representation of sense data, be they directly ac-
cessible to observation or indirectly so through instruments and exper-
iments. Yet even in this context, descriptions are usually not an end in
themselves, but are implicated in the construction of models as well
as in explanations and thus in a larger explanatory and argumentative
frame. To some extent, this already points to the use of description in
other fields, in particular to its literary use, as will be detailed below
(chap. 3.2).
In the humanities outside philosophy, ‘description’ is less fre-
quently opposed to ‘explanation’ than to interpretation (see Kindt/
Müller 2003), although a clear-cut differentiation between these two
notions is sometimes regarded as questionable (e. g. by Danneberg
1996). In Clifford Geertz’s notion of the so-called “thick description”
(see 1973, in particular chap. 1), which has become highly influential
in New Historicism and beyond, this opposition is even programmati-
cally undermined, as “thick description” implies the attribution of cul-
tural functions, and hence explanations, to historical data.
It is time to draw an intermediate summary: so far, three basic
functions of the descriptive have been established:
a. description as a means of identification and reference through
characteristic attributions; this attributive, referential nature of
the descriptive, which points at something in the world (or at least
a possible world), differentiates it from purely logical and self-
referential modes of organizing and using signs, as, e. g., in mathe-
matical equations;
b. description as a means of identifying and communicating sense
data that one receives from the observation of a given reality;
c. description as a means of providing objective information rath-
er than explanations or interpretations (one has, however, to
qualify this by saying that in most contexts it is recognized that
description often provides the basis of subsequent explanation and
interpretation).
All of these functions refer to description as a special frame in special

contexts. Are these functions also present in everyday situations?
Indeed, everyday communication deserves attention, for it arguably
provides the origin of, and a common denominator for, not only spe-
cial discourses such as philosophy and the theory of science, but also
concerning what is in focus in the present volume, namely the use of
description in literature and other media. So, for what purposes do we
use descriptions in everyday communication?
The three examples given at the outset of the present essay may
serve as initial clues: all of these examples – the Russian doll, the
Mozart symphony and the Gryphon – referred to absent phenomena
and served to identify them as alternatives to the respective lexemes,
which, for the sake of argument, where assumed to be unknown,
momentarily unavailable or not sufficiently meaningful. As the ab-
sence of these objects precluded direct identification through deixis,
the reference was made through some of their qualities. Description, it
appears, has obviously a referential function, but employs reference
in a special way which permits the identification of the object or
phenomenon that is meant. In this identificatory function the descrip-
tive differs from narrative, which is also referential or at least sug-
gests referentiality, without, however, typically or necessarily serving
the purpose of identification. (Rather, narrative frequently either pre-
supposes or implies the identification of relevant elements of a story
through naming or provides them precisely through description.)
However, description is not limited to identifying objects and does
not do so through simple naming but, as a rule, through multiple attri-
butions. This is why the first typical function of descriptions in every-
day life should be formulated as indirect identification through at-
tribution.
If description, as used in everyday discourse, in this first function
differs from narrative, description is quite similar to narrative in a
second typical function, namely in its presentational or re-presenta-
tional function. This effect, which could also be observed in Exam-
ples 1 to 3, derives from the common referential nature of both semi-
otic macro-modes as means of rendering present absent or distanced
phenomena15.
15
In the rare cases where narration or description are used with reference to present
situations some kind of at least cognitive distance is nevertheless to be assumed (for
description in these borderline cases see below).
14 Werner Wolf
Owing to their typically detailed quality, descriptions in everyday

use tend to fulfil a further, related function, which is an intensification
of (re-)presentation, and also applies to narrative, namely to provide
and store experience. However, differences again appear between
description and narrative in this respect: the experientiality of narra-
tive is geared to allow the recipient to re-experience events and hap-
penings in which a story’s character(s) is (are) involved. A typical
effect of the experience of ‘good narratives’ both in everyday situa-
tions and in the arts and media is the impression of becoming part of
the narrated world and becoming re-centred in storyworlds even to
such an extent as to feel suspense. Successful descriptions also fre-
quently elicit a feeling of being ‘close’ to the phenomena described,
but their relationship to suspense is more indirect: descriptions can, e.
g. through the creation of a certain atmosphere and the raising of con-
comitant expectations, contribute to suspense but in this depend on
the overarching frame narrative. Descriptions alone, without such a
support, cannot be suspenseful. In comparison to narrative, the experi-
entiality of description is generally of a different nature and fulfils
other functions. While (‘good’) narratives (besides other functions,
such as making sense of temporal experience) often allow us to be-
come immersed in the eventful facets of represented worlds and to
witness the actions and fates of anthropomorphic beings, descriptions
generally confront us with the sensory aspects, the ‘whatness’ of
individual phenomena and world-facets. As stated above, these phe-
nomena are, as a rule, absent. They are usually described in order to
convey a vivid idea of them, to ‘re-present’ or evoke them to the
imagination of the recipients. Description then serves as a substitute
for sensory experience. Where, exceptionally, phenomena are present
in the perception anyway (for instance, when an art historian explains
a painting to a group of museum visitors) the experiential function of
descriptions may be seen at work by making such objects appear
under a fresh angle or by contributing to a ‘correct’ view. Although in
these cases description does not provide experience, it may intensify
it. Generally speaking, providing or intensifying as well as communi-
cating and storing a quasi-sensory experience are facets of a very
common, pragmatic function of everyday descriptions16.
16
Other facets of the representational function of description are less common, the
extremest form perhaps being conjuring up. This may, e. g., apply to a mythical be-
ing which is evoked through mentioning its qualities so that the descriptor can use its
power or gain power over it. Although such uses may today be obsolete to a large ex-
This leads us to the question as to whether description, in everyday

use, is also opposed to explanation or interpretation as in the sci-
ences. I would say, yes, at least in principle – and in this the descrip-
tive as a mode of representation differs again from narrative: the
elements of all typical stories, unlike elements of a description, must
be linked to each other logically, in particular through causality and
teleology; this gives meaning to them, often of an explanatory kind, at
least within the story, and each ‘good’ story must in addition have a
point. Such a ‘point’ can consist in broadening our knowledge of what
is possible, usually in spite of contrary expectations (in stories of the
type “imagine what happened to me...”), or it can consist in an illus-
tration of some general idea or in the explanation, how a present state
has come about. In all of these cases, narrating, the construction of
meaning and indeed explanations are closely related. Stories do not
only typically provide explanations for internal constituents (e. g. why
someone has died) but also frequently serve as explanations of
external issues or ‘points’. With descriptions this is less frequently the
case: the point of a good description is not to explain something but to
inform us about the existence of something and its specific appear-
ance and quality, in short: to represent something vividly (anschau-
lich). To this extent, description is opposed to explanation and inter-
pretation not only in the theory of science but in everyday use, too.
Thus, the main functions of the descriptive as a means of represen-
tation in everyday discourse are quite similar to the previously sum-
marized functions in science and philosophy:
1. to refer to phenomena and to permit their identification through the
attribution of, in particular, sensory qualities;
2. to provide representations that permit us to imagine or to re-
experience these phenomena;
3. to provide facts about these phenomena rather than interpretations.
To what extent is what has been said about everyday descriptions
relevant to descriptions in literature and other media, including
rhetorical description, a field in which the earliest reflections on de-
scription are documented (see Adam 1993: 26-29; Halsall 1994)? My
contention is that most of the basic functions just discussed are also
tent, they nevertheless indicate that the representational function may be linked to fur-
ther purposes.
16 Werner Wolf
relevant for this context, which is to a large extent an aesthetic one.

However, the third function must be somewhat modified. In addition,
when speaking of aesthetic and medial representations, we must take
into account fictionality, which so far has not played a role in our
reflections. Thus, the following general functions of the descriptive in
literature and other media can be noted:
1. The referential function: the first function, which can easily be
linked to what has been said about description in non-aesthetic
contexts, is the referential function. It implies either the identifi-
cation of a real phenomenon (in particular if it is well-known) or
the construction of fictitious phenomena within artistic or medial
possible worlds. Both tasks are achieved through the attribution
of usually a plurality of qualities to concrete phenomena. This re-
ferential function includes mimesis but is not restricted to it, as
clearly non-mimetic, e. g. fantastic fictional objects, can also be re-
ferred to in the mode of description.
2. The representational and experiential function: the second
function, which can also be related to what has been detailed
before, is the vivid representation (in classical rhetoric, a repre-
sentation showing ‘energeia’ as well as ‘enargeia’17), e. g. the per-
suasive and convincing visualization of a phenomenon18. The ex-
perientiality implied in this vividness in many cases also elicits
aesthetic illusion19: the impression of being re-centred in the
space created by the described object and of experiencing it as a
possible, even plausible world, in spite of the fact that one retains
a residual consciousness of its being ‘made up’.
3. The pseudo-objectivizing and interpretive function: The third
function which was mentioned for the contexts discussed above
and which is also valid for many everyday descriptions, namely to
17
Both terms are frequently confused with each other but have slightly different
meanings: while ‘energeia’ emphasizes rhetorical persuasio through Anschaulichkeit
[‘vivid representation’], ‘enargeia’ focuses on visualization through a plethora of de-
tails (see Rippl 2005: 68 and 70, and Bernhart in this volume).
18
Visualization was already stressed by Cicero as an effect of descriptio (see Halsall
1994: 550); for the role of description (‘enargeia’/’energeia’ and ‘evidentia’) in clas-
sical rhetoric see Beaujour 1981: 28-33.
19
This is a consequence of a successful concretization of the object described (cf.
also the article on description quoted above in Quotation 1 [Nünning, ed. 1998/2004:
60]); for more details on aesthetic illusion see Wolf 1993 and 2004a.
provide more or less objective facts rather than interpretations,

is debatable in the context of the arts and media. Of course, de-
scription here also informs the recipients about elements of the
represented worlds, about things that appear ‘to be the case’ there.
Yet what may furthermore be said about the ‘objectivity’ of de-
scriptions in this context is at best that many of them not only
strengthen the effect of aesthetic illusion as a quasi-experience of
a reality, but elicit the impression that the possible world in ques-
tion refers to the reality as we believe to know it. In other words,
the aura of objectivity created by what must be termed the
‘pseudo-objectivizing function’ of many descriptions in the arts
and media can trigger a referential sub-form of aesthetic illusion,
namely a ‘reality effect’ (effet de réel, see Barthes 1968)20. Other-
wise, the idea that description provides objective data would
clearly be untenable with respect to literature and other medial
representations. This is not only the case because of the general
problematics of ‘objectivity’, which occur in other contexts as
well21, but also, and in particular, since artefacts are usually con-
sidered to be meaningful constructs. Michael Riffaterre was most
outspoken about this problem. He said with reference to “literary
description” that its “primary function [...] is not to make the
reader see something [...] not to present an external reality [...] but
to dictate an interpretation” (1981: 125). While Riffaterre’s down-
grading of “making the reader see something” is arguably too
radical (not only because in English, the very term ‘seeing’ can
also mean ‘understanding’, but also, and above all, since it runs
counter to the experiential function of the descriptive), his idea is
basically convincing. For the nature of artefacts and texts as inten-
tional constructs renders it highly probable that even the descrip-
tive construction or representation of the ‘givens’, for instance of a
narrative possible world, is not an ‘innocent’ business but serves a
purpose (like the narration of events) and that description has its
20
This effect, which Barthes (1968) – in the tradition of classical antiquity (see
Halsall 1994: 552) – linked especially to description, may have something to do with
the frequent focus of descriptions on natural phenomena (e. g. landscapes or physiog-
nomies), which suggest a ‘just being objectively there’.
21
Cf. also the well-known findings of cognitive psychology that there is no per-
ception without interpretive application of cognitive frames, which points to the fact
that there is no rendering of perception in description without previous, if unwitting,
interpretation either.
18 Werner Wolf
place in it – and is hence implicated in the construction of

meaning of the artefact or text as a whole as well as in guiding
various responses of the recipients22. We will come back to the
functional issue of description not only as an information on seem-
ing ‘facts’, but also as a contribution to the overall meaning of
artefacts in the chapters dedicated to individual medial examples.
2.3. The location of the descriptive/description within a typology of

semiotic macro-modes/macro-frames, media, genres and micro-
level realizations
For the time being, another problem must be discussed, namely the
question of where to locate descriptions and the descriptive in a typol-
ogy of genres, media and semiotic (macro-)modes. This problem is
particularly thorny since the descriptive can inform an entire work or
artefact but also only parts of one that may not be predominantly
descriptive in itself and may contain other semiotic frames. Examples
of the former case in the visual media would be still lives, genre
scenes, land- or cityscapes (see, e. g., the cover illustration to this
volume, a daguerreotype by Louis J. M. Daguerre of the Boulevard du
Temple in Paris) or the rare case of a Bildbeschreibung (the descrip-
tion or ‘ekphrasis’ of an artefact as an independent text).
Perhaps the best way to systematize what is under discussion here
is to start from the open category of basic semiotic macro-modes or
what one may call, with an eye to their top-level importance, ‘macro-
frames’. ‘The descriptive’ with its defining, gradable quality of de-
scriptivity is on this abstract level opposed to ‘narrative’, ‘the argu-
mentative’, etc. Fludernik, in an illuminating essay (2000), named this
top level the level of “macrogenres” (282).
These macro-modes are, however, highly abstract and require for
their realization both media and systematic as well as historical
genres (be they general genres or sub-genres). The fact that the
descriptive, like all macro-frames, can be realized in more than one
medium shows that these macro-frames are to a large extent media-
independent (although, as we will see when comparing fiction, paint-
22
In the light of this well-known critical position it is hard to understand why Ronen
insists on bashing theoreticians of description for maintaining a largely chimerical
opposition of ‘non-meaningful description’ vs. ‘meaningful narration’ (see Ronen
1997: 280).
ing and music with reference to their respective descriptive potentials,

the conditions of each medium do have an influence). As for the gen-
res, this level refers, firstly, to general genres (which sometimes over-
lap with media23) such as, within the verbal media, drama (as typically
not narrator-transmitted) or narrations of the type novel, epic and
short story (as typically narrator-transmitted) and within the pictorial
media, for instance, religious painting, historical painting, still life,
etc.
As a rule, the macro-modes, or more precisely, their occurrence as
a dominant, is a defining feature both of general genres and sub-
genres. Thus, narrative is dominant, within the verbal media, in the
general genres novel and drama as well as in sub-genres such as
gothic fiction or comedy, and within the pictorial media, this is to a
certain extent true, for instance, of the genre history painting. Similar-
ly, the argumentative prevails in verbal genres such as the philosoph-
ical essay, the scientific treatise, etc., and the descriptive is dominant
in verbal Bildbeschreibung as well as in painterly still lives, the dif-
ference being here that still life forms a well-known general genre
within the pictorial media, while Bildbeschreibung is much less fre-
quent as a verbal genre of its own24. In fact, in the verbal media, the
descriptive tends to occur not as a defining, dominant quality on the
level of general genres or sub-genres but rather on the typologically
lower micro-level of individual artefacts, where it often appears as a
subdominant frame alongside other frames. This occurrence on a
micro-level is exemplified in the above Quotation 3 from Hardy’s The
Woodlanders, where an initial description is followed by a narrative
passage. Both frames are here part of a novel, hence of a general
genre in which narrative is the dominant frame (and therefore also
dominant on the micro-level, where it is mixed with other frames such
as the descriptive or the argumentative).
In sum: the descriptive is a semiotic macro-mode or macro-frame
that can be realized by several media and may occur, within individ-
ual media, in general genres as well as in sub-genres. In these genres,
23
See Fludernik 2000: 282, who subsumes under “genres/text types” “novel, drama,
film”.
24
Nevertheless it is erroneous – and indicative of the pitfalls of an exclusively
literature-centred approach to what is basically a transmedial phenomenon – to claim
that description is not “an independent type of text [or rather a macro-frame that
typically informs independent genres and text types], but rather an integrative
component of the (usually narrative) text in which it appears” (Bal 1981/1982: 144).
20 Werner Wolf
it can be the dominant, then informing the macro-level of the genre or

of the respective works. It can, however, also occur on the micro-level
of texts and artefacts, in which case it may be only present as one sub-
dominant frame among others.
In this dual potential of being located on two different levels, on a
higher, macro- as well as on a lower, micro-level, description in prin-
ciple resembles other semiotic macro-modes, in particular narrative
(although narrative occurs more frequently on the higher level). With
reference to a typology of verbal texts, this potential recursivity of
frames has already been proposed with particular clarity by Virtanen
(1992)25 and in similar terms by Fludernik (2000). For our purpose of
a transmedial typology these findings can be adapted and the resulting
typological possibilities be visualized as in Figure 1 (cf. also Wolf
2003: 181); one should, however, emphasize that in Figure 1 all reg-
isters (1-5) show only examples and hence do not represent the full
repertoire of options.
25
Virtanen, from a monomedial focus on verbal media, gives description the status
of a “discourse type” or “text type” (according to its location on the primary or on the
secondary level) together with narrative, instructive, expository and argumentative
(1992: 299). In spite of the fact that Virtanen is not concerned with a transmedial
typology of semiotic macro-modes but only with a text typology, his conceptualiza-
tion can be adapted to fields beyond verbal texts.
1) semiotic the descriptive narrative argumentative other

macro-modes
(cognitive macro-
frames)
2) media in which verbal media, verbal media, verbal media, …

the macro-modes pictorial medium, pictorial pictorial
can be realized film, medium, medium
(examples) music (?) film,
music (?)
3) examples of (sub-) still life, soap opera, philosophical …

genres in which ekphrasis, (sentimental) essay,
the macro-modes/ … novel, scientific
-frames can be … treatise,
realized on the …
macro-level
4) examples of the
the descr. (the arg.) narr. (the descr.) (the arg.) the arg. (narr.)
use of macro-
modes/-frames on
the micro- level
of individual
genres together
with other frames
(the sub-dominant
modes in brack-
ets)
descriptive argu- narrative descrip- narra- the main narrative

5) verbal examples passages in men- passages tions in torial argu- illustra-
of macro-modes an ekphra- tative in a a novel explana- ment in tions in
sis passages novel tions in a treatise a treaties
on the micro-level in an a novel
ekphra-
sis
Figure 1: The descriptive in the context of a typology of semiotic macro-modes,

media and genres
22 Werner Wolf
2.4. Content-related and formal/presentational characteristics and

stimuli of the descriptive in literature and other media
(exemplified with verbal texts)
After the preceding introductory discussion of the descriptive in lit-
erature and other media in terms of its relationship to occurrences out-
side this medial field as well as in terms of basic general functions
and its typological location in a matrix of semiotic macro-modes,
media, genres and micro-level occurrences, it is now time to deal in
more detail with the following questions: What are the typical
content-related and formal or presentational features of descriptions
as opposed to narrations or narrative elements within a given work?
And by what means is the descriptive frame activated in the recipi-
ent’s mind? Since it would lead too far to treat these questions for all
media and possible genres and since the theory of description is most
advanced in narratology, these questions shall be discussed in the
following predominantly with reference to literature, or at least to
verbal texts. This applies, however, only to the extent that such texts
contain general typical features of the descriptive (specific character-
istics that are only relevant to verbal media will be treated in a sepa-
rate sub-chapter). As mentioned earlier, the descriptive is a gradable
quality; therefore a prototypical approach will be adopted in the out-
lining of its features. In that, I shall first focus on the most typical and
central characteristics of descriptions (mostly in comparison with nar-
rative as the nearest neighbouring frame), before discussing some
more marginal features.
An obvious possibility of approaching the characteristics of de-
scriptions is answering the following question: are there typical con-
tents or objects of description in literature and other media – in
comparison to typical contents of narrations? There are two respects
in which this question can immediately be answered with reference to
literature as well as to other media: Firstly, objects of description, like
the content of narratives, can be either real or fictional, and if fic-
tional, as said above, mimetic or non-mimetic (e. g. fantastic) with-
out any typical bias: a mythical non-mimetic object such as a gryphon
can be described in a similar way as a real bird26.
26
In literature and other media, the fictional in fact forms a frequent extension of the
realm of possible objects of description.
Secondly, descriptions, again like narratives, focus on concrete

phenomena rather than on abstract notions: thus, in literature, archi-
tecture as a discipline would not be a fit object of description, but an
architect or a castle could well be one.
In a third respect there is a perhaps natural tendency to further
qualify typical objects of description as opposed to narrative. Sey-
mour Chatman’s typology of “necessary components” (1978: 19) of
narratives comes to mind here: He differentiates between dynamic
“events” and static “existents”. ‘Existents’ comprise spatial and tem-
poral ‘settings’ as well as ‘characters’, while ‘events’ comprise ‘ac-
tions’ (“in which an existent is the agent of the event”) and ‘happen-
ings’ (“where the existent is the patient” [ibid.: 32]). Now, it seems
natural to say that Chatman’s ‘existents’ seem to be ‘the proper stuff’
of description. One may even further claim that objects of descrip-
tions are, of course, not only static but also spatial (cf. Genette 1969:
59), while contents of narratives are dynamic and temporal.
At first sight, this appears to be largely acceptable, and many, in
particular literary, scholars would no doubt agree. On further reflec-
tion, however, one must make important reservations. Static, spatial
existents as the ‘proper stuff of description’ is at best a formula to ac-
count for the most frequent and to that extent prototypical cases in
some media, in particular literature (where narrative is an alternative
frame that covers most of dynamic, temporal events) and the pictorial
medium (whose static signifiers unfolding in space rather than in time
privilege static, spatial existents as their signifieds and referents). As
a general claim, this qualification is, however, an oversimplification
and must be rejected: for descriptions (even in verbal art) can also
apply to acoustic phenomena, as will be discussed with reference to
the question of descriptive music. Following Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing’s Laokoon (1766/1974) and his well-known discussion of a
famous passage in Homer’s Iliad (book 18), one must moreover con-
cede that dynamic processes cannot be excluded from the realm of de-
scription either, not even from literary description, for an epic can, for
instance, follow the process of the forging of a shield (cf. also Chat-
man 1990: 31 and Giuliani 2003: 36). In addition, descriptions, e. g.
in novels or films, can occur from the point of view of observing
agencies in motion such as characters in cars, panning or travelling
24 Werner Wolf
cameras (cf. Bal 1981/1982: 132) and may be centred on dynamic

phenomena, objects and characters that are equally in motion27.
I would even like to radicalize these reservations concerning the
‘proper stuff of description’ and claim that one and the same object of
representation can be involved in both a description and a narrative
irrespective of its static and spatial or dynamic and temporal quality.
A dynamic activity such as a journey is a case in point: one and the
same trajectory can be rendered – and here the German terms are
revealing – as a Reisebeschreibung (a ‘travel description’) or a Reise-
bericht (a narrative ‘travel report’)28 depending on what is in focus.
Thus, the flight of a World War II bomber pilot from his base to a
target city and back could be exclusively centred on the country he
sees from above, with its landscape and already destroyed cities. Such
a text focussing on the pilot’s perceptions including the effect of the
bombs on the target city below – in Chatman’s terminology a ‘hap-
pening’ – would be a dynamic description. The same flight and the
perception of the destroyed cities could, however, also become the
basic situation of an inner conflict of the pilot whether he should obey
his orders or save the lives of thousands of civilians. He may suddenly
remember the tragic story of a friend who has just escaped an air raid
himself, a thought that may motivate the pilot to drop all of his bombs
onto open fields rather than onto a crowded city. This version of the
flight with its transgression of an official order by a morally con-
scious hero would clearly be a narrative. So, the occurrence of dy-
namic content elements such as the movement of an aircraft is clearly
not a criterion for distinguishing between description and narration,
this criterion must be something else. This ‘something else’ may best
be described as the presence or absence of the core elements of typi-
cal narratives: motivated actions that involve anthropomorphic agents,
are interrelated not only by chronology but also by causality and tele-
ology and lead to, or are consequences of, conscious acts or decisions,
frequently as results of conflicts. Jeffrey Kittay is right when he says
that descriptions typically refer to, and respect, “surface[s]” and bor-
27
Chatman, before referring to Homer’s “‘dramatized’ descriptions admired by
Lessing” (1990: 32) emphasizes himself that “movement” does not “necessarily mark
the end of description and the beginning of narrative” (31); cf. also Lopes 1995, who,
however, does not distinguish neatly enough between objects of description and de-
scriptive discourse: “[...] not all descriptions are static.” (23)
28
In English, ‘travelogue’ comprises both meanings (cf. Terrell et al. 1981: 542 [s.
v. “Reisebeschreibung” and “Reisebericht”]).
ders within possible worlds, while in narratives such borders (which

can also be limits of the officially allowed as in our example) are
usually being transgressed, which typically constitutes an action (see
1981: 228 and passim29). This is also why narratives usually raise ex-
pectations and create suspense, whereas descriptions, as stated above,
cannot be suspenseful in themselves. Thus, even though, at closer in-
spection, “[a]ctional and descriptive discourse [...] form a polar rather
than an ungradable contrast” (Sternberg 1981: 76), motivated action,
notably the overcoming of an obstacle and the transgression of bor-
ders, moral and otherwise, is clearly outside the domain of the de-
scriptive30. In this sense a castle would be a typical object of a de-
scription, while castle-building on a forbidden site would not. It is this
absence of actantional events which appears to favour Chatman’s ‘ex-
istents’ as objects of descriptions while not excluding ‘events’, pro-
vided the focus is on the sensory appearance (on the ‘whatness’)
rather than on narrative eventfulness.
A further question concerning descriptive objects refers to their
location, namely whether they are typically to be found in the exter-
nal world of objects or in the internal world of the imagination, in
the world of thoughts and dreams, in other words, whether a castle or
a castle-in-the-air would be a more typical object of a description.
This question is only partially related to the opposition ‘reality vs. fic-
tion’, which has already been dealt with, for the imagination compris-
es both fictional and real objects. All in all, owing to the limitation of
description to concrete objects, there is perhaps a slight tendency to
favour actual outer objects and beings, but imaginary phenomena or
beings can also become objects of descriptions – as long as they are
not mere abstractions and are not involved in actions. Thus, for in-
stance, physiognomies and even dynamic gestures may be descriptive
objects, whether of real characters or of persons in dreams, but as
soon as a gesture indicates that, e. g., a momentous decision has been
made, it turns into an element of narrative.
29
Although Kittay does not refer to Lotman, his notion of what is typically narrative
is remarkably close to Lotman’s definition of an eventful ‘sujet’, which involves the
transgression of normative as well as usually spatial borders or limits (cf. Lotman
1970/1977: chap. 8.3).
30
Cf. Giuliani 2003: 36, who correctly states that, as opposed to narration, descrip-
tion, besides not being suspenseful in itself, does not focus on changes that lead to a
teleological goal.
26 Werner Wolf
The inclusion of ‘internal’, mental objects into the field of poten-

tial objects of description raises another question, namely whether it
comprises also psychic and bodily sensations such as emotions or
pain. I would say, the answer is ‘yes, in principle’, but again one and
the same phenomenon can be classified differently, depending on the
point of view taken, namely either as description or as expression.
For, as previously said, the descriptive as a mode of representation
typically has a referential function. This does not only mean that the
descriptive, in a general semiotic sense, points to something outside
the semiotic system and hence is ‘hetero-referential’ as opposed to
self-referential, but also that it fulfils a referential function in the
narrower sense, as described in Roman Jakobson’s well-known theory
of the functions of language (see 1960), namely the utterance or
representation of facts, opinions, ideas (cf. also Crystal 1987/1997:
10). As such, the referential function, as typically fulfilled by descrip-
tions, is to be differentiated from what Jakobson calls the emotive,
that is, the expressive function (see 1960). Thus, ‘ouch’ as an excla-
mation of pain attributed to a character in a novel is a non-descriptive
expression of pain, while the same character – or for that matter a
narrator – could also be made to describe the same pain. In this case
the emphasis would, for instance, be on the identification of the exact
spot on the character’s body where he or she feels the pain together
with the verbalization of the specific kind of pain.
One should, however, not forget that Jakobson’s theory does not
preclude the simultaneous presence of several functions in one and
the same speech act (or semiotic act). In view of this, the theoretical
distinction of description and expression should not obscure the fact
either that in medial representations both phenomena are often closely
connected. In fact, there is no such thing as an absolutely objective,
object-centred referential description, since description, as mentioned
above, always presupposes a subject, the descriptor, and his or her
perspective (although the descriptor, as will be stressed later, need not
necessarily be part of the descriptive representation). In practice, a
descriptive act could therefore even be said to be tendentially bi-
polar: in it, a dominant referential, object-centred pole31 is opposed to
a subdominant subject-centred pole, which determines the perspective
of observation but also contains emotional reactions and evaluations.
31
It is dominant for without an object of description there would be no description
at all.
As we will see, it is through this subject-centred pole that attitudes

enter media-transmitted descriptions that are theoretically opposed to
it in the theory of science, namely interpretation and explanation, as
well as subjective, perspectival ‘distortion’ and expression. Owing to
one of the basic functions of description mentioned above, namely to
create an impression of objectivity, descriptiveness may be said to be
proportionate to the degree to which interpretation and at least idio-
syncratic subjectivity are concealed32. Conversely, the foregrounding
of these factors can lead to diminishing object-centred descriptivity
while increasing the portrayal of subjective (perhaps even unreliable)
perception and/or evaluation.
As a last question, the problem of typical objects of description
also involves the dominant sensory quality of such objects: are they
typically acoustic, olfactory, tactile or visual? The answer seems sim-
ple. For most of the examples given so far have pointed in one direc-
tion, namely that objects of description are mostly visual. Yet again, a
modification must be made, for irrespective of medial restrictions
there is no reason for excluding objects addressing other senses, as
the last example (the description of pain) shows. It may only be the
predominance of the visual, be it anthropological or cultural, that
leads to privileging the visual even in media such as narrative fiction,
which can extend to other sensory objects as well33.
After the foregoing remarks one can now see how it is that, at least
in literature and in the pictorial medium, there is a tendency (but no
more than that) to privilege certain objects of description as typical,
namely concrete, static and spatial objects of outer reality that can be
visualized and are not merely the subject of emotional expression.
However, in principle, that is, irrespective of medial constraints, it is
impossible to exclude any non-abstract phenomenon as such from the
possibility of becoming an object of description. This includes acous-
tic phenomena and even happenings (e. g. the destruction of a house
by a bomb, which can in fact be described rather than narrated) – as
long as no narrative connections are made and a mere (seeming) fact
32
This is, however, not to say that a probable and life-like perspective employed in
description, e. g. when following the gaze of a ‘focalizer’ in fiction or film, could not
also enhance descriptivity.
33
With reference to verbal texts it is therefore an oversimplification to claim, as
does Mieke Bal in her otherwise highly differentiated theory of description, that
“every description is a depiction in words of our vision of an object” (1981/1982:
134, my emphasis).
28 Werner Wolf
is in focus. A further major difference between narrativity and de-

scriptivity emerges from this consideration: stories depend on the
combination of certain constitutive content elements, and narrative is
therefore a complex frame; there is no narrativity without at least one
character, nor without events and at least an implied spatial and tem-
poral setting. Description, on the contrary, is a less complex frame, as
it can use each of these constitutive ‘building blocks’ of narratives in-
dividually: settings, the physiognomies of characters, and details of
actions and happenings – all of these can in fact become objects of a
description. Consequently, even though descriptions may privilege
‘existents’ in Chatman’s sense, one may say that in principle the
descriptive is much more content-indifferent than the frame ‘nar-
rative’. In other words: descriptiveness seems to be much less a
matter of content than a matter of presentation and transmission,
in narratological terms: a matter of discursivation (cf. already Bal
1980: 10034).
What then are the typical modes of descriptive presentation?
The most important mode directly results from what has been said and
at the same time forms perhaps the most powerful stimulus to apply-
ing a descriptive frame: it is the discursive emphasis on ‘surface’ ap-
pearances and hence sense data/impressions, even if they are erro-
neous or imaginary. Owing to this emphasis on the ‘whatness’ of a
phenomenon, descriptive objects can appear as more or less isolated
givens of a possible world – irrespective of their narrative concatena-
tion to other elements of this world. In this essential aspect of the
discursive presentation we re-encounter, in slightly altered form, the
emphasis on description as an ‘objective’ rendering of sense data rath-
er than on explanations which we have encountered in the use of the
notion ‘description’ in philosophy, the theory of science and in the
natural sciences.
Seen against this dominant feature of a descriptive discourse, an-
other issue of transmission that has troubled narratology for decades
and that may be transferred to the identification of descriptions can be
34
Criticizing former theories of description Bal aptly summarizes: “L’objection la
plus importante qu’on peut leur faire est qu’ils sont fondés sur une distinction entre
les différents objets du texte, et non sur le texte même.” (1980: 100) It is also note-
worthy that at least in his differentiation between “[p]rocess statement[s]” and “stasis
statement[s]” (1978: 32) Chatman actually does not present the difference between
‘events’ and ‘existents’ as an essentialistic one but as the effect of a discursive presen-
tation.
dismissed without much ado, namely the vexed question of whether

descriptions require an intracompositional descriptive agency, a ‘de-
scriptor’, who would be analogous to a narrator. From a transgeneric
and transmedial point of view, the answer is clearly ‘no’. The exist-
ence of an intracompositional transmittor is neither a criterion of
narrativity (for it also applies to drama) nor of the descriptive. De-
scriptions in literature and other media can in fact be transmitted by
an overt descriptor or by a covert one or even by no fictional descrip-
tor at all. Thus, descriptions, in nineteenth-century realist novels, are
typically transmitted by an overt narrator/descriptor, in modernist
fiction frequently through the eyes of ‘focalizers’ while the narrators/
descriptors remain ‘covert’, and in descriptive paintings it would not
even make sense to speak of a covert descriptive agency at all, unless
one meant the painter him- or herself (but the painter is not an intra-
compositional agency). All this, of course, does not mean that it does
not matter whether there is an overt intracompositional descriptor or
not, for – as in narratives – this has important consequences, e. g. for
the discernibility of objectivity or subjectivity, but this would require
a more detailed discussion.
One of the most difficult questions concerning the discursive
transmission of descriptions refers to the possibility of identifying a
descriptive discourse or representation formally, owing in particu-
lar to specific modes of internal organization35. Mieke Bal has
emphasized that the principal semantic operation of description is
attribution (see 1980/1985: 130, and 1981/1982: 104). As a conse-
quence, any representation in which linking qualities to objects is
dominant and, for instance, more important than constructing objects
as agents or patients of action, should qualify as a description.
While the predominance of attribution is indeed perhaps the most
important and typical formal feature of description, there are others
that should also be taken into consideration. One of them derives from
vivid representation (which often, albeit not always, equals vivid
visualization) as one of the principal functions of the descriptive. This
consists in the tendency of descriptions to contain seemingly super-
fluous details that are rendered in similar terms (in language: syno-
35
In language, there would be additional facets, e. g. the use of certain verb forms
(tendentially non-finite forms and non-actantional aspects), yet such specific features
would hardly be characteristics of the descriptive if considered in a wider, intermedial
context.
30 Werner Wolf
nyms) or belong to the same semantic class and are thus more
predictable than the individual signs employed for the transmission
of narratives (cf. Bal 1981/1982: 10436). The relative predictability
and apparent superfluousness of a plurality of ‘graphic’ details –
‘superfluous’ if seen from the perspective of narrative relevance37 – is
at the same time a stimulus which contributes to triggering the frame
‘description’ in the recipient’s mind. Although the number of details,
can, of course, vary considerably38, the fact that such details typically
exist in descriptions at least to some extent, helps to differentiate de-
scription from mere reference but also from simple enactment. Thus,
the mere adumbration of a human figure by means of a circle and
some lines denoting a body, legs and arms is no more a genuine de-
scription of a person than having a character simply cross the stage in
some kind of neutral, ‘nondescript’ costume as a part of a larger group
denoting, for instance, the population of a city. In contrast to this, the
rendering of the particular shape, colour and aspect of an individual
human face with wrinkles, scars, hair etc. would certainly be perceiv-
ed as a ‘depiction’, and the same would apply to a dramatic character
who is sent on stage in a historical costume produced with a visible
love for period details.
A further typical feature of the internal organization of descrip-
tions, which is related to the aforementioned relative predictability of
descriptive details, is the following one: in descriptions, the absence
of narrative constraints leads to a privileging of a paradigmatic dis-
cursive organization (as opposed to a predominantly syntagmatic
36
With a view to literary descriptions Bal opposes “lexical predictability” as typical
of descriptions to “logical predictability” as typical of narratives (1981/1982: 104).
37
Among inexperienced or merely plot-centred readers (as I was when, as a boy, I
devoured the novels of Karl May) this apparent redundancy – together with an un-
welcome interruption of the action – often leads to skipping descriptions.
38
In his contribution to this volume, Ansgar Nünning differentiates between
“bottom-up, data-driven description” and “top-down, frame-driven description” (99).
Obviously, the former variant is the one in which details are more numerous, as the
latter one can reduce the number of given details, because it relies more heavily on the
recipient’s cultural competence to recognize the object referred to along with its
typical qualities. It is clear that there are no descriptions in literature that do not, to a
certain extent, activate pre-established schemata. My point here is that description is
typically more than a mere reference to such schemata, as this could be achieved by a
single word without further attributions.
organization in narratives39). If, therefore, causal and teleological con-

catenation of different and ever new actantional elements is typical of
narratives, the typical mode of organization in descriptions is the
metonymic juxtaposition of qualities (see Pflugmacher 2005: 101)
that are attributed to individual objects (e. g. flowers in a verbal de-
scription of a meadow or trees in the representation of a forest linked
by “here” and “there” or “and” rather than by “because”, “suddenly”
or “finally”).
Apart from that, the internal organization of descriptions is heavily
dependent on the medium chosen. This can be seen in the application
of descriptive iconicity. Static and spatial objects, spatial media and
in particular the pictorial medium seem privileged in following the
‘natural’ contours of the objects described by means of ‘perceptual’
or ‘imagic’ iconicity. A temporal medium such as verbal fiction is on
the other hand better suited to rendering dynamic objects of descrip-
tion, whose consecutive stages can be represented in a discursive
sequence showing ‘diagrammatic’ iconicity as a kind of ‘conceptual’
iconicity40.
In sum, the descriptive – similar to the frame ‘narrative’ – is a
multifactorial cognitive frame. It consists of a number of ‘descrip-
temes’ which may be realized to a higher or lesser extent in individual
artefacts41. These descriptemes can be arranged, as shown in the fol-
lowing overview, according to the previously used criteria of func-
tion, content and form/mode of presentation; one may furthermore
differentiate according to primary descriptemes, which belong to the
core of prototypical descriptions (and can therefore form ‘stimuli’ that
trigger the corresponding frame in the recipient’s mind [in the over-
view in bold type]), and secondary descriptemes (single underlined),
which are characteristic of prototypical, albeit not all cases of descrip-
tion and generally play a role, in particular when it comes to discuss-
ing degrees of descriptiveness:
39
Cf. also Lopes 1995: 5: “[...] descriptions prove to be far more pliable and versa-
tile than narrations, since, unlike the latter, they are free from the constraints of logic
and narrative grammar.” This is, however, only a tendency, as paradigmatic forms of
organization can also inform comedy (see Warning 1976) and certain other forms of
narratives (see Warning 2001).
40
For the different kinds of iconicity see Fischer/Nänny 1999.
41
For an analogous conceptualization of the frame ‘narrative’ through ‘narratemes’
see Wolf 2002c, 2003 and 2004b.
32 Werner Wolf
1. Functional descriptemes
1.1. referentiality (the hetero-referential quality of descriptions,
which is qualified by the following descriptemes no.s 1.2-2.4);
1.2. representationality (the representational quality of the refer-
ence) and experientiality (which is linked to vividness of the re-
presentation eliciting, or enhancing aesthetic illusion);
1.3. the pseudo-objectivizing function of descriptions (their sugges-
tion of objectivity) while they at the same time fulfil an interpre-
tive function (they contribute to, or constitute, an interpretation
of the object described or of the text/artefact in which they oc-
cur).
2. Content-related descriptemes
2.1. concrete phenomena as objects of the description (whether
real or imaginary) rather than abstractions;
2.2. ‘existential’ phenomena as objects of description rather than
actantional ones (with a slight tendency towards spatial rather
than temporal and static rather than dynamic objects, although
these alternatives are also frequent);
2.3. a tendency towards external rather than internal (mental) objects,
although, again, these alternatives cannot be excluded from the
field of the descriptive;
2.4. a tendency towards the visual/visual objects rather than towards
other sensory aspects/other objects, which, however, also occur
as objects of descriptions.
3. Presentational/formal descriptemes
3.1. an emphasis on sensory appearance/impressions in the quali-
ties attributed to the objects of description (a focus on their
‘surface’);
3.2. multiple, paradigmatic attributions of qualities to the object of
description as a basic semiotic operation that goes beyond mere
reference (as identification), leading to a tendency towards a
multiplicity of (predictable) details.
2.5. Description and related notions in the context of literature and

other media
The foregoing discussion allows us to differentiate, in a survey, de-
scriptions and the descriptive as used in literature and other media
from related notions, in particular from (hetero-)reference, narrative
and expression:
a. Description and (hetero-)reference: The descriptive, as a semiotic
macro-mode, always implies (hetero-)reference in a general, semi-
otic sense (as opposed to self-reference42), namely as any relation
that exists, for communicational purposes, between a sign and a
meaning that is (thought to be) located outside the sign system, i.
e. in a possible world. The kind of ‘reference’ implicated in de-
scription must, however, still be further clarified, for reference can
functionally be restricted to mere identification, but description, as
we have seen, always implies more than that. Thus, in a novel, a
simple noun, e. g. a name, would be an identifying reference43, but
not a description, while the addition of an adjective to the same
noun can be a mini-description44. However, this would not as yet
be regarded as the typical referentiality of descriptions either, for
typical descriptions tend to attribute a plurality of qualities and
details to the phenomena referred to. Thus, description not only
partakes in general hetero-referentiality and the referential func-
tion but uses it repeatedly for one and the same object.
b. The descriptive as opposed to narrative: Both phenomena are
cognitive frames, in particular semiotic macro-modes that serve to
organize representations and imply hetero-reference. Yet, this is
done along different lines: while narrative consists of actantional
representations implying motivated and (e. g. causally and teleolo-
gically) meaningful changes of situations, the descriptive focusses
42
For the various kinds of self-reference see Wolf 2007a, and 2007b (forthcoming).
43
This applies to verbal reference. As opposed to this, representational reference in
the visual arts always implies some degree of descriptiveness (see below, chap. 3.1.).
44
Of course, the difference between simple reference and description is not an abso-
lute one but can be gradual. The relation between the two concepts is further compli-
cated by the fact that sometimes description is a first step towards defining an object,
such as a newly found plant, which then can be referred to by a simple, not necessar-
ily descriptive sign.
34 Werner Wolf
on ‘existential’ phenomena45: while the typical suggestion of nar-

rative is that ‘something happened because of something else and
led to a certain end’, the typical suggestion of description is simply
that ‘something is there and like that’46.
c. Description as opposed to expression: Both notions can be sub-
sumed under ‘reference’ in the aforementioned very general, semi-
otic sense, yet apart from that they are located on different logical
levels: a description is the realization of a semiotic macro-mode
which implies an intensified referential function and a specific
organization of signs, while expression, according to Jakobson
(see 1960), is a basic linguistic or semiotic function in itself; it can
be found (independently of the medium employed) in narratives
and descriptions as well as in other semiotic macro-modes.
2.6. Intermediate summary: definition of the descriptive in literature

and other media
The amount of commentary which has been used in this Essay in
order to explain description shows that it is a particularly elusive phe-
nomenon. Yet, it would no doubt be unsatisfactory if this elusiveness
and the concomitant difficulties in handling description as a concept
led to what has been claimed in research, namely that description can-
not be defined at all47. For if we have a notion of the descriptive, if we
are able to apply this frame when we perceive a description, it should
also be possible to account for it in more than negative terms.
Therefore, by way of intermediate summary of the above reflec-
tions, a tentative definition of description shall be given that sums
up what has been said so far: The descriptive – like narrative – is a
cognitive (macro-)frame. In semiotic terms, it can be said to constitute
a transmedial and transgeneric semiotic macro-mode of organizing
45
This ‘existential focus’ should not be confused with Chatman’s static spatial ‘ex-
istents’ (see 1978: chap. 3), which are components of narratives. It simply denotes an
emphasis on the ‘whatness’ of a phenomenon, object, person, etc. irrespective of its
involvement in a story.
46
The (seeming) referentiality of both narrative and description must be emphasized
in opposition to Ronen’s claim (see 1997: 279) that reference is usually attributed to
description only.
47
Cf. Bal (1980/1985: 129), “Problems arise, [...] as soon as one attempts to define
exactly what description is”, and Lopes’ view that “[...] unlike narration, description
seems to elude any attempts at being defined in a systematic way” (Lopes 1995: 7).
signs in representations which can inform the macro-level of certain

works (and thus become the dominant frame of entire texts and arte-
facts). It can, however, also occur on a micro-level (thus forming de-
scriptive parts of individual texts and artefacts). In contrast to narra-
tive, which typically consists of meaningful actantional representa-
tions, the descriptive provides ‘existential’ representations. This is
why descriptions do not require changes of situations as necessary
constituents and cannot be suspenseful in themselves (although they
can contribute to narrative suspense) nor do they teleologically lead to
a certain goal. In literature and other media, the objects of descrip-
tions are concrete phenomena that can be fictitious or real, but are all
represented with a noticeable emphasis on their sensory appearance.
They are frequently static (spatial) and visual, but dynamic (temporal)
objects and other sensory qualities can also be relevant. The main pur-
pose of descriptions is not the mere identification of such concrete
phenomena but their vivid representation through the paradigmatic
attribution of qualities. This leads to a particular experientiality, and
often descriptions also elicit, or reinforce, aesthetic illusion. Another
important function of descriptions is the often covert contribution to
the overall meaning and interpretation of the artefacts in which they
occur.
The stimuli that activate the frame ‘description’ in the recipient’s
mind are taken from the features that characterize the descriptive.
Most important is a representational use of signs that highlights the
physical ‘whatness’ of a concrete object through detailed attributions.
A discernible emphasis on paradigmatically transmitted perceptual
details (‘surface’ details) is a related marker of descriptiveness. If the
description occurs in the larger context of a narrative, an additional
stimulus is the feeling that the narrative progress is interrupted or
temporarily suspended.
2.7. The concretization of descriptive objects in the recipient’s mind

Stimuli given by a descriptive artefact or text are only part of what
must be taken into account when the frame ‘description’ is activated
in a recipient with reference to a concrete object. As with all frames,
stimuli that reside in the object perceived (in our case notably the
aforementioned ‘descriptemes’) can only be successful if the recipient
cooperates, for it is in his or her mind that the medially transmitted
descriptions must be realized in order to be efficient in the first place
36 Werner Wolf
(see Walter Bernhart’s contribution to this volume). What Gombrich

called, and discussed as, “the beholder’s share” in the ‘reading’ of
pictures (see 1960/1977: 154-244) can in fact be generalized and ap-
plied to the decipherment of all kinds of descriptions. Together with
the recipients and the ‘world knowledge’ at their disposal, the con-
text, in particular the cultural context and the cognitive frames pro-
vided by it, must be mentioned as further important factors in the
workings of descriptions. As Ansgar Nünning’s contribution to this
volume deals extensively with this aspect, some brief remarks will
suffice here.
The “beholder’s share” has a basic, general implication which
must be actualized independently of the medium employed when it
comes to a successful reception of a description: it consists in the
recipient’s ability and willingness to apply the frame ‘description’ in
the first place (the recipient’s knowledge of reality but also of cultural
artefacts and texts has a large share in determining to what extent the
elements contained in a description will elicit vivid ideas and imagi-
nations). Yet, as the descriptive is a representational macro-mode,
there is also a share that varies according to the medium or kind of re-
presentation employed. This variable share concerns the transfer from
the materiality of the medial or textual representation to what Roman
Ingarden called the ‘concretization’ of the objects described in the
recipient’s mind (see Ingarden 1937/1968: 49-55). For, as already
said, it is indeed in the recipient’s mind, in his or her imagination, that
the signs of a text or representation have to coalesce into something
that can be identified and experienced in analogy to the real-life
phenomena referred to in the respective description. In this process,
media-specific gaps, or, to use another one of Ingarden’s terms, “Un-
bestimmtheitsstellen” (‘areas of indeterminacy’, 1931/1965: 261-270,
and 1937/1968: 50), must be taken into account. Apart from the recip-
ient’s ability to fill in gaps (which is always required to a greater or
lesser extent, as all medial representation includes areas of indeter-
minacy), it is indeed to a large extent these Unbestimmtheitsstellen
which determine the descriptive potential and limits of individual
media as well as the nature and extension of the recipient’s share in
the process of concretization. These media-specific issues shall be
discussed in the following with reference to select individual media.
3. Descriptive potentials and limits of individual media
As stated in the previous chapter, the concretization of descriptions

depends, among other factors, on the medium employed48. This is why
the focus of the individual contributions to this volume will be on
specific media. In the following, no anticipation of these individual
explorations is intended; the purpose of the next three sub-chapters is
rather to give some general idea of the extent to which media can in
fact influence the realization of the frame ‘description’. By way of
example, three media will be selected that are particularly important,
as they can provide insights also into other media as well as into the
extent of the descriptive field as a whole, namely the pictorial
medium as epitomized in paintings (which also covers elements that
are relevant, e. g., to photography), narrative fiction as a representa-
tive of verbal media (many descriptive aspects of fiction may also be
found to be applicable to other verbal media such as drama or film),
and instrumental music as an apparently problematic case at the
margins of the descriptive field. The sequence of the discussion will
follow the degrees to which these three media, at first sight, appear to
have affinities to the descriptive, starting with the seemingly most
descriptive medium. This hierarchy of descriptive potentials will,
however, be questioned in the end.
In order to facilitate comparison, one typical object of description
will be in focus, namely landscapes in which mountains or hills play a
role. As a basis of comparison among the three media chosen, the fol-
lowing guiding questions will be asked each time (albeit not always in
identical sequence):
1. What is the predominant semiotic nature of the signs employed in
each case49? This question refers to a central aspect of the specific
medial nature of the medium in question.
2. How does this semiotic nature influence the descriptive potential
of the medium under scrutiny? In particular: what consequences
48
Cf. Chatman 1990: 38: “Though each text-type can be actualized in any commu-
nicative medium [...] each medium privileges certain ways of doing so.” (However,
Chatman, speaks, with reference to description, of “text-type[s]” and does not distin-
guish, like Virtanen, between ‘discourse types’ and ‘text types’ [see above, note 25]
nor employs the term ‘cognitive frame’ in this context).
49
This implies that apart from predominant or typical signs there are also others,
yet it is the dominant ones that determine the descriptive potential of a given medium.
38 Werner Wolf
does the dominant quality of signs have on the recipient’s share

in ‘deciphering’ descriptions, what problems may arise, and to
what extent is the frame ‘description’ applicable to the given
medium in the first place?
3. What is the relation between the two representational macro-
frames description and its ‘other’, narration, within the medium
in question, and how is description marked as a frame of its own, if
it occurs alongside narration?
4. What specific functions can be attributed to description within the
medium under scrutiny?
A fifth question could refer to the history of description in each
medium. Yet, answering that would lead too far in the present context
and would in some cases anticipate the contributions to this volume
that are dedicated to individual media. Therefore, it must suffice here
to generally emphasize the importance of the historical dimension in
order to complete our enquiry into the descriptive; details will to
some extent emerge from the other essays in this book, will be found
in previous research, or must be relegated to further research.
3.1. Description in a pictorial medium: painting

The first medium under scrutiny is painting as a representative of the
pictorial media (in this essay also addressed as ‘the pictorial me-
dium’). From an etymological point of view, ‘description’ does not
seem to be an appropriate term for a pictorial medium as part of the
visual media, since these media do not ‘describe’ but ‘depict’. How-
ever, it is arguably not by chance that descriptio was for centuries a
received term used for both verbal texts informing readers about, e. g.,
foreign countries (such as in Helvetiae descriptio by Henricus
Glareanus, 1519) and for maps (to remain within a Swiss context, cf.,
for instance, a map of the territory of Zurich from 1750 entitled Nova
descriptio ditionis Tigurinae, regionumq[ue] finitimarum)50. Clearly,
the features of the descriptive frame outlined above (identification of
objects through characteristic attribution, communicating sense data
about them and rendering them in a [seemingly] objective way) can be
applied to both verbal and visual representations. Therefore, it makes
sense (and not only with an eye to historical usage) to apply the term
‘description’ to the pictorial medium as well and to compare its de-
50
See also above, note 1.
scriptive potential to other media according to the aforementioned cri-

teria and guiding questions.
As for the first guiding question, it is easily answered with re-
ference to the pictorial medium in focus. The typical class of signs
employed here are iconic visual signs that are usually referential. In
the kind of pictorial medium that will be discussed in the following,
namely single pictures (and not ‘movies’), these signs are in addition
static.
Considering the tendency that many objects of description (some
would even say typical objects of description) are static and spatial
and additionally appeal the to sense of vision, a pictorial medium such
as painting appears to have a very high descriptive potential. This
is all the more so since pictures, as opposed to, e. g., verbal narratives
or films, do not have a beginning, a middle and an end but, so to
speak, only a middle and (optionally) a frame, which, according to
Luca Giuliani (see 2003: 286), favours description as implying a fo-
cus on a specific object. Moreover, the iconic quality of the over-
whelming majority of pictorial signs with their reference to form and
colour seems to create a natural closeness to a maximum of possible
objects of the kind mentioned. “Rather than merely imagining” to per-
ceive something, as when reading verbal descriptions with their
symbolic signs, in looking at pictures, as Kendall L. Walton pertinent-
ly remarks (1990: 301), “one imagines one’s seeing the canvas to be a
seeing of the [object described]” (or, in Walton’s terminology, the
object ‘depicted’). As a consequence, one is tempted to claim that this
medium requires only a relatively low degree of recipients’ share in
the concretization of depicted objects, since it permits the beholder to
experience these objects in a way that is much closer to real-life
perception than is the case, e. g., in written literature51. The affinity
between the pictorial medium and description indeed seems to be so
intimate52 that the second guiding question, namely to what extent the
51
This, of course, does not imply a denial of the fact, emphasized e. g. by Gombrich
(1960/1977: 251), that how to ‘read’ paintings has to be learnt just like other cultural
techniques and that consequently there is no “innocent eye”. The “relatively low de-
gree of the recipient’s share” only refers to the comparison with symbolic sign sys-
tems such as written texts and in addition to ‘concretization’ as the early stage of re-
ception (the understanding of what is described in the first place), before subsequent
interpretation sets in.
52
Cf. also Alpers 1983: xxi, who uses the conventional impression “that painting by
its very nature is descriptive” as the starting point of her interesting historical discus-
40 Werner Wolf
frame ‘description’ is applicable here, sounds banal and should there-

fore rather be reformulated: are there pictures at all that are not
descriptive?
Even if at first sight the answer seems to be, ‘of course there aren’t
any’, on second thoughts, this reformulated question must get a more
nuanced response. For, besides the fact that there are paintings that
appear to be narrative rather than descriptive53, there are in fact non-
descriptive paintings, notably of an abstract nature as epitomized by
some works of Wassily Kandinsky or Piet Mondrian’s “Composition”
(1930, see Illustration 2).
Illustration 2: Piet Mondrian. “Komposition” (“Composition”, 1930)
The non-descriptiveness of such abstract works of art clearly resides

in the simple fact that they do not employ pictorial signs in a referen-
tial way. They therefore do not conform to one of the principal func-
tions of the frame ‘description’, namely to representationality, let
alone to life-like experientiality, nor do they create aesthetic illusion.
sion of the emphatically descriptive Dutch art of the seventeenth century as opposed
to what she considers the mainly narrative art of the Italian Renaissance.
53
For the relationship between these two frames in painting see below.
Yet, ‘abstraction’ is not a monolithic category. Rather, there are

degrees of abstraction, of distinctness of representation and, in con-
nection with this, of intensity of illusion. In connection with this,
there are also degrees of painterly descriptivity. It is, for instance,
well known that referential art unfolds between poles which Gom-
brich called efficient “making” and convincing “matching” (1960/
1977: 121). Art that is typologically located near the former pole con-
centrates on providing easily readable schemata (which tend more
towards abstraction), while art that is closer to the opposite pole
focusses more on lifelikeness and less on abstraction and can there-
fore elicit aesthetic illusion more easily. In terms of descriptiveness,
the former type tends to a relatively low degree: references are estab-
lished for which “the merest schema will suffice, provided it retains
[an] efficacious nature” (Gombrich 1960/1969: 94). An example of
this procedure is the treatment of the mountains and forests in
Giotto’s fresco “La Fuga in Egitto” (Illustration 3).
Illustration 3: Giotto. “La Fuga in Egitto” (“The Flight into Egypt”, 1304-1306,
Padua, Chapel of the Scrovegni)
42 Werner Wolf
Clearly, the outer aspect of ‘real’ mountains and mountain forests – as

opposed to the appearance of clothes – is not among the main inter-
ests of our painter. As for the forests, Giotto reduces them in what is
termed in art history ‘Topothesie’ (see Schneider 1999: 15): a forest is
here represented schematically by no more than six individual trees.
In this painterly metonymy, or pars pro toto, these six trees and the
two bare peaks adumbrate, rather than vividly describe, a mountain
scene54.
As opposed to Giotto’s schematic, low-degree landscape descrip-
tion there is, at the other extreme, nineteenth-century realism, as re-
presented by Karl Haider’s painting “Die Mühlsturzhörner”, a moun-
tain group near Berchtesgaden/Bavaria (1901, see Illustration 4). This
painting attempts to ‘describe’ the view of specific mountains with
many clearly identifiable, realistic details such as the postglacial
boulders in the meadow, the shrubbery, the fir trees and spruces in the
middle ground, and the topographically accurate rock formations in
the background. The most important difference from Giotto’s moun-
tain scene, however, is the general impression conveyed by Haider’s
painting that here the scenery is rendered in imitation of a real-life
perspective, as it would appear from a point of view within the de-
picted world. Paintings like this one show to what extent the pictorial
medium is in fact ideal for the description of spatial, visual objects
such as landscapes.
Owing to the constraints of painting as a spatial, visual medium,
there are, however obvious limitations, as soon as the object described
is not visual, spatial or in movement. In order to represent an ava-
lanche, for instance, with a maximum of descriptivity, film would
clearly be the better medium. If paintings still attempt such descrip-
tions, they must resort to specific triggers which help the viewer to
transcend the ‘frozen moment’ depicted. This is usually done by em-
ploying pictorial signs in a heavily indexical way, e. g. by repre-
senting figures whose bodies betray the movement of flight (see the
historical woodcut reproduced in Illustration 5).
54
In view of pictures like this one, one is tempted to consider the quantity of details
given in a (pictorial) representation as a criterion of descriptivity. While this is tenable
to the extent that schematic representations which have a low degree of descriptivity
typically provide few details, one must add that there are other, and perhaps more
important criteria (e. g. the lifelikeness of colour, form, texture, etc.), which contrib-
ute to ‘convincing matching’ in Gombrich’s sense and hence to a higher degree of de-
scriptivity.
Illustration 4: Karl Haider. “Die Mühlsturzhörner” (“The Muehlsturzhoerner”,

1901)
Illustration 5: Johannes Weber. “Staublawine über die mittlere Entschigtal-Galerie

der Gotthardbahn bei der Station Wassen (Uri) am 15. Februar 1888, Blick nach
Norden zum Witenstock” (“Dry avalanche across the Gotthardbahn’s middle
Entschigtal Gallery at the Wassen station [Uri] on February 15, 1888, when looking
north towards the Witenstock”, 1888)
44 Werner Wolf
In cases like this dynamic scene, the painterly medium must rely
on a particularly large share of the recipients’ imaginary activity. For
the same reason – medial limitations – paintings also have obvious
difficulties in representing, for instance, language and other acoustic
phenomena as well as in realizing the temporal frame of representa-
tion par excellence, namely narratives55.
This leads us to the third guiding question, namely how descrip-
tivity and narrativity are related in paintings and whether the de-
scriptive can be singled out as an independent frame. We are not
concerned here with the question, which I have treated elsewhere (see
Wolf 2002c, 2003, 2004b), of whether pictures can be narrative in the
first place. Suffice it to say that this medium can in fact be narrative
to a certain extent, provided representations imply or indicate a tem-
poral and actantional dimension. The relative rarity of genuine nar-
rativity and the extreme frequency of the descriptive in pictures
reverses the problem of marking: it is not so much the frame ‘de-
scription’ that requires marking in pictures, as it seems to be the
default option in this medium anyway (at least as long as it is used as
a representational medium), but rather the exceptional frame narra-
tive. In individual, so-called ‘monophase’ pictures, narrativity is fre-
quently signalled by an intermedial reference to a verbal story, as is
the case in Giotto’s representation of the Holy Family’s flight to
Egypt, which illustrates a narrative episode of the Gospel according to
St. Matthew (2.13-15). Generally, the most important marker of narra-
tivity is the existence, or at a least suggestion of, both a temporal and
actantional dimension (which are not requisite in description). Both
elements are adumbrated in Giotto’s painting by the gesture of the
angel pointing to the right and by the direction of the little procession
which also moves from left to right, for a reason and with a goal that
are both implied in the biblical text to which the iconography and the
title of the picture refer.
As for the relation between narrativity and descriptivity in paint-
ings, two general remarks may be sufficient for our purpose of a
cursory medial comparison: The first holds true for all potentially nar-
rative media and consists in the simple fact that descriptions can, of
course, contribute to the illusionist experientiality and the meaning of
stories. Description can, for instance, constitute background informa-
tion on the characters of a story, just as the way characters are dressed
55
This is, of course, not to say that pictures cannot evoke narratives.
can indicate their social status, their love of luxury or thrift etc.
Generally speaking, description often serves to create the ground (in
particular the setting) on which the figures or characters of a narrative
can be seen to act. It is with an eye to this figure/ground relation that
description can be called in many – albeit not in all – cases “ancilla
narrationis” (Genette 1969: 57, see also below).
The second remark refers to a specificity of the painterly medium.
As pertinently stated by Luca Giuliani, a pictorial representation can
in its overall effect, i. e. in the triggering of a semiotic macro-frame
on the macro-level, only be either descriptive or narrative (see 2003:
36)56. On the micro-level, this is, however, different, and it is here that
a remarkable specificity of the medium appears: while paintings can
be exclusively descriptive and non-narrative, they cannot be totally
narrative without descriptivity (see ibid.: 285) and in this differ from
verbal narratives which do not absolutely require descriptions. In
painting (as in film), there is in fact no narrativity without at least a
minimum of descriptivity. Each pictorial (hetero-)reference, as op-
posed to a verbal one, can be regarded as a minimally descriptive ges-
ture, for pictures cannot refer to concrete phenomena without giving
at least some details. In contrast to this, a verbal medium, owing to the
symbolic nature of language, can remain within the field of unspeci-
fied and abstract concepts (such as ‘tree’ or ‘forest’). Painting can
only refer to concepts by specifying them iconically to some extent
(even if it can be more or less schematic): it must opt for one rather
than another quality of the referent57 (e. g. for a tree resembling a fir
tree or a deciduous tree, a tree with brown rather than green leaves,
etc.). Therefore, all painterly references to essential narrative building
blocks, notably persons, settings and actions, are also at least mini-
mally descriptive, as can be seen in Giotto’s fresco58.
56
Other general frames such as argumentation are here out of the question.
57
Chatman (1990: 40-41) makes the same point about cinema, which “cannot help
describing” (40), but this only refers to implicit (“tacit” [38 and passim]) cinematic
descriptions, from which he distinguishes “explicit” (ibid.) descriptions. The inescap-
ability of a relatively detailed descriptiveness in cinema is even more radical than in
painting (“film cannot be vague” [ibid.: 41])], as the option of merely schematic mi-
mesis is here not usually given, let alone an analogy to abstract painting.
58
According to Alpers, a third general remark could be made with reference to the
actualization of the frames ‘description’ and ‘narration’ in painting: “There seems to
be an inverse proportion between attentive description and action: attention to the sur-
face of the world described is achieved at the expense of the representation of narra-
46 Werner Wolf
The fact that all pictorial narratives include description does not
invalidate the general opposition ‘description vs. narration’ in the
visual media, since the reverse does not hold true, for, as e. g. most
still lives show, not all descriptions imply narrations. Yet, this same
fact nevertheless constitutes a problem for the usefulness of the appli-
cation of the transmedial notion of the descriptive to visual media: for
if most (representational) paintings are more or less descriptive, the
notion of descriptiveness does not seem to be very helpful any longer.
A solution to the problem may reside in the notion of ‘more or less’:
the degree of descriptiveness as such may be a useful category of
pictorial analysis, and in some cases it may even be useful to reserve
the notion of ‘descriptive painting’ to works displaying a particularly
high degree of descriptivity and interest in the surface appearance of
the objects represented, as claimed by Svetlana Alpers for seven-
teenth-century Dutch art (see Alpers 1983). In addition, ‘the descrip-
tive’ may be a helpful notion if one wants to differentiate, in one and
the same picture, e. g. between a narrative whole and a predominantly
descriptive part (in which, as said above, maybe the setting of a
narrative scene is detailed) or between parts that differ according to
the predominance of descriptivity or a mixed descriptive-narrative
mode.
As for specific functions of the descriptive in paintings, or to be
more precise, of a high degree of descriptiveness, one may, for in-
stance, mention the (meta-aesthetic) displaying of painterly skills as is
the case in many still lives59. Other, perhaps more important functions
include the employment of descriptive painterly representation as a
topographical recording medium and precursor of photography up to
the nineteenth century, and generally the creation or intensification of
aesthetic illusion. In all cases of emphatic descriptiveness, the promo-
tion or the satisfaction of a heightened interest in the outer, physical
appearance of concrete phenomena are no doubt further functions.
These functions also contribute to explaining the historical devel-
opment of painterly descriptivity. It is no coincidence that in post-
tive action” (1983: xxi). I am, hoverer, not quite sure whether this is really tenable,
since, for instance, the intense narrativity of Hogarth’s picture series (such as “A
Rake’s Progress”) depends on minute descriptive details rather than being antagonis-
tic to description.
59
Stoichita has convincingly emphasized this metapictorial function of the still life
as an eminently descriptive painterly genre (see 1993/1998: 33).
classical times descriptive painting reached a hitherto unknown de-

gree in the Renaissance and in the seventeenth century in Dutch art,
that is, in periods of renewed interest in the physical (rather than the
spiritual) world.
In many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape paintings,
which moreover frequently celebrate nature in the Romantic tradition,
intended functions of painterly description are clarified by resorting to
what one may call ‘reception figures’. These are people who are re-
presented alongside the described objects and through whose atti-
tudes, emotionally expressive gestures and other responses the objects
described receive a particular colouring. Reception figures thus repre-
sent the subjective pole of the descriptive act within the artefact itself
and so become an important means of influencing the real recipient by
providing relevant frames of interpretation. This is, for instance, the
case in Johann Heinrich Wüest’s oil painting “Der Rhônegletscher
(Wallis) Blick nach Nordosten” (1772/1773, see Illustrations 6 and
6a).
Illustration 6: Detail from Johann Heinrich Wüest. “Der Rhônegletscher (Wallis)

Blick nach Nordosten” (“The Rhône Glacier [Wallis] when looking north-east”,
1772/1773, cf. Illustration 6a)
In this painting no less than three contemporary frames are referred to

by the reception figures: the tiny human figures in the central
foreground point to the glacier as if to a theatrical performance –
nature, through this emotional gesture, is construed in terms of the
eighteenth-century aesthetic of the sublime, while the little dog, most
presumably a pet, points to the emergent frame of nature as a tourist
attraction visited for the sake of entertainment. The group of recipient
48 Werner Wolf
figures which is located somewhat to centre right and contains a

landscape painter mis en abyme provides yet another contemporary
frame: namely nature as a ‘picturesque’ object of aesthetic representa-
tion – and this is arguably the frame through which the real spectator
is himself principally meant to view Wüest’s painting.
Illustration 6a: Johann Heinrich Wüest. “The Rhône Glacier”

3.2. Description in the verbal media: narrative fiction

At first sight, the second medium under scrutiny here, namely verbal
fiction as a representative of (exclusively) verbal media (here also
called ‘the verbal medium’), seems to have less descriptive potential
than painting, at least with regard to objects of description from the
field of concrete spatial and visual phenomena. The obvious reason
for this ‘Laokoon-problem’ rests in the nature of the verbal medium
itself: although it is typically as referential as the pictorial medium, it
is a temporal and dynamic medium, that is, it unfolds in a sequence of
text and not, as painting, in the simultaneousness of a canvas. In
addition, the dominant type of signs employed is symbolic and not
iconic, which makes an extra demand on the recipient’s activity. Ver-
bal texts do not permit a life-like reconstruction of objects through the
perception of iconic signs. Rather, the work of concretization is here
exclusively the recipient’s share. And yet, the frame ‘description’
looms large in almost all works of literature, and the very term ‘de-
scriptio’ already points to the close connection of literature as writing
or ‘scriptio’, and description.
One of the great advantages of a verbal medium is its referential
flexibility: there is in fact hardly a conceivable phenomenon that can-
not be referred to in language, and there are virtually no concrete
objects, including artefacts and works of art, that cannot be described
to some extent with words60. However, when it comes to vivid repre-
sentation or imitation, language, since it unfolds in time, is admitted-
ly, fitter to ‘imitate’ temporal objects (including most notably lan-
guage itself) and has difficulties in imitating spatial phenomena. With
spatial objects it can hardly avoid creating a remarkably high number
of areas of indeterminacy or Unbestimmtheitsstellen in Ingarden’s
sense. Yet, as mentioned above with reference to G. E. Lessing’s
Laokoon, this problem is not as fundamental as it may seem, for in
many cases there are ways and means to ‘dynamize’ the description of
spatial objects, e. g. as a process of production. Another means, made
use of since the late eighteenth century, are intermedial borrowings
60
For literary descriptions of visual works of art as well as for works of music there
are even special terms: ‘ekphrasis’ (which could even lead to an intermedial mise en
abyme of description, if the visual artefact verbally described is in itself decriptive)
and ‘verbal music’ (for the latter form see Scher 1970 and Wolf 1999: 59-62); both
variants of intermedial reference aim at triggering an imaginary perception of the
works or media referred to.
50 Werner Wolf
from, or rather references to, the descriptive medium of spatial repre-

sentation par excellence, namely painting61. So the real problem en-
countered in the verbal media is not the question of whether the frame
‘description’ can be realized in it at all (it can), but rather how to
organize the descriptive discourse.
This problem is inextricably linked to another one, which is of par-
ticular relevance to verbal media, namely the relation between de-
scription and narration. In literature – as opposed to, e. g., paintings
such as still lives – description rarely informs an entire work, nor does
it usually form an independent genre except for some kinds of lyric
poetry (e. g. the Dinggedicht). In narrative fiction at any rate, descrip-
tion usually constitutes a subordinate frame that operates under the
auspices of the dominant frame ‘narrative’ and usually helps prepare
the ground on which the characters act. Genette therefore called
description the handmaiden of narrative (“ancilla narrationis” [1969:
57]), but also claimed, on the other hand, that in spite of this hierar-
chy, there is no narration without description (see ibid.62). Riffaterre
(1986) criticized this claim and even inverted Genette’s alleged hier-
archy between narration and description, which for him becomes
“mater narrationis” (293). This is, however, overstating the case, for
in theory, verbal narratives can do without Anschaulichkeit (‘graphic
representation’) and descriptions – although they would perhaps not
be very good narratives. At any rate, both frames are in principle more
independent from each other in verbal texts than in the pictorial
medium, where Genette’s claim is more appropriate, namely that
narration – where it occurs – cannot do without description.
As for the internal organization of descriptive discourse, verbal
texts show a variety of solutions to this problem, covering a whole
range of degrees between a very loose and a rigid, artificial structure.
All in all, their organization gives the impression of much more flexi-
bility and perhaps even arbitrariness than is, for instance, the case in
narrative texts or passages. There is even the danger that verbal de-
61
The supplementarity of the pictorial medium is, for instance, explicitly thematized
(and illustrated by the inclusion of pictures) in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
in the reference to the ‘gryphon’ quoted at the beginning of this essay. As Lopes
rightly remarks, similar intermedial references could also lead to metamedial self-
reflexivity that deals with the limits and possibilities of painting and literature (see
1995: 149).
62
“[...] la narration [...] ne peut exister sans description, mais cette dépendance ne
l’empêche pas de jouer constamment le premier rôle.” (Genette 1969: 57).
scriptions, in the terms of Evelyn Cobley, “turn into lists of items

which are not only randomly successive but also indefinitely extendi-
ble” (1986: 399). Cobley highlights two crucial structural problems of
descriptive discourse, namely where to fix the just amount of descrip-
tive details as well as where and how to end a description.
As Cobley’s statement implies, the beginnings of verbal descrip-
tions seem to present fewer problems. There are in fact a number of
conventions that help to signal such beginnings. The opening of de-
scriptions as well as their endings are thus related to the marking of
the frame ‘description’. One of the most obvious conventions, at least
in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, is the initial position of
descriptions either with reference to the entire text or to major seg-
ments, in particular those that are marked by a change of scenery.
Another convention used in order to set off descriptions from sur-
rounding narrative passages on the micro-level is to lead the story to a
pause in its dynamic unfolding, e. g. when a traveller takes a rest and
has leisure time to gaze at the surrounding landscape, for it is at this
point that usually dynamic, actantual verbs will be followed by pre-
dominantly existential ones (we will come back to this switching from
narration to description in the context of the motivation for descrip-
tion). In all of these cases the ‘theme’ of the description is, as a rule,
mentioned in the first few lines63. This naming together with the use
of paradigmatic attribution rather than syntagmatic narration is a po-
werful additional marker of descriptive beginnings.
In contrast to descriptive openings, the endings of verbal descrip-
tions tend to present major problems of organization, marking and
motivation. As opposed to narratives, in which the ending, as a rule, is
the logical or otherwise motivated result of a foregoing development,
the ending of descriptions is more or less arbitrary: it can happen at
any time, notably when the descriptor feels that a sufficiently clear
and vivid idea of the object described has been given. Yet, it is
usually difficult to see why this should happen at one specific point
rather than another. Therefore, descriptions are in principle “indefi-
nitely extendible” (Cobley 1986: 399), and, as Philippe Hamon justly
remarks, their endings are far less predictable than the endings of
narratives (1975: 510). However, Hamon has shown that there are
possibilities not only to signal the beginnings but also the endings of
descriptions (see 1975: 510-513). If authors do not want to resort to
63
Otherwise, the description can become a riddle, a “devinette” (Hamon 1975: 511).
52 Werner Wolf
the simple device of metatextually thematizing the imminent end, the

exhaustion of a previously announced descriptive pattern (e. g. the
four points of the compass in a landscape description) is an alternative
possibility. Another one is to come to the end of a ‘technological pro-
cedure’ motivated, e. g., by the logical or usual steps in the construc-
tion of a building (ending with the interior decoration). Yet another
alternative would be to take up the situation motivating the descrip-
tion in the first place, thus creating a ‘framing’ effect of closure64.
As for the problem of how to internally organize verbal descrip-
tions in between the beginnings and endings, which equally implies
the question (also mentioned by Cobley) concerning the just amount
of descriptive details, one must remember a general fact about de-
scriptions, namely that they all leave Unbestimmtheitsstellen and that
such areas of descriptive indeterminacy are more or less discernible
according to the nature of the medium employed. They are less so
where the medium harmonizes with qualities of the objects described.
In the verbal medium fiction, this applies to two fields: firstly, when
this medium is used to represent processes, and secondly, when it
serves to render that phenomenon in which language is at its mimetic
best: namely language itself. Yet, where a medium ‘goes against the
grain’ of the objects described, areas of indeterminacy are more con-
spicuous. In verbal fiction, this is the case with static spatial objects.
Attempts at reducing these areas through ever more details (or, as
shown with reference to photography in Michelangelo Antonioni’s
classic film Blow-Up [1966]) can even result in laying bare the
medium as such – a metafictional effect that is exploited on purpose
in the endless descriptions, or rather metadescriptions, of the French
nouveau roman65. It is also in such cases that the problems of plausi-
bly organizing the descriptive discourse become most discernible.
64
Hamon (see 1975: 520-521) also mentions formal devices, e. g. the use of pho-
netic and semantic markers of closure as in terminal parallelisms – yet this way of or-
ganizing endings is more frequently found in lyric poetry than in narrative fiction.
65
Here, the overdoing of description reveals the fact that the literary discourse is
centred on a verbal creation (resulting in a “description creátrice” [Ricardou 1967:
95]) rather than on the mimetic rendering of a seemingly pre-existing reality and ulti-
mately turns description into “une machine à désorienter [l]a vision” (Ricardou 1967:
19; cf. also Ricardou 1978: 124-130). For the excessive use of description in the
nouveau roman (e. g. in Robbe-Grillet’s Le Voyeur [1955]) as a device counteracting
narrativity and undermining aesthetic illusion see moreover Wolf 1993: 428-433 and,
recently, Rippl 2005: 87-96, who also discusses texts in English. On ‘metadescrip-
One possibility of ordering a descriptive text, even if it refers to a

static spatial object, is what has already been mentioned in the context
of marking descriptive endings, namely to follow or invent a process
that can plausibly be related to the object described, e. g. its construc-
tion (this is the famous Homeric device applied in the description of
Achilles’s shield in book 18 of the Iliad). A second possibility is to
attempt some descriptive iconicity by discursively following some
order inherent in the described phenomenon itself or in its perception.
As for the object itself, a ‘natural’, iconic rendering in a dynamic ver-
bal medium is, however, restricted to the diagrammatic iconicity imi-
tating processes that go on in the world described (e. g. a sunrise)66
and thus would not apply to static spatial phenomena. Another kind of
diagrammatic iconicity could, however, apply, namely “experiential
iconicity”: as I have detailed elsewhere (Wolf 2001; cf. also Cobley
1986), the organization of a descriptive verbal discourse can imitate a
process of perception, and this could even apply to static objects, e. g.
when the description of a landscape follows a dynamic gaze which
firstly surveys the foreground, then the middle ground, and lastly the
horizon67.
tions’ see Ansgar Nünning’s contribution to this volume. It should be clear that de-
scription – as any other semiotic macro-form – is open to metatextuality and that
metadescriptive elements are therefore as little confined to the twentieth or the
twenty-first centuries as ‘metanarrative’ ones, but can, for instance, already be seen, in
the mock-heroic description of the angered Joseph Andrews in chapter III/6 of Henry
Fielding’s novel of the same title (1742) or in E. A. Poe’s short narrative “The Do-
main of Arnheim” (1847), where the narrator “despair[s] of conveying to the reader
any distinct conception of the [landscape] marvels which [his] friend did accom-
plish”; the narrator continues with an interesting reflection on the problem of organiz-
ing a descriptive discourse: “I [...] hesitate between detail and generality. Perhaps the
better course will be to unite the two in their extremes” (Poe 1847/1908: 39).
66
A descriptive discourse following the sequence of a process would be similar to
the diagrammatic iconicity underlying the ordo naturalis of many narrations.
67
Thus, object- and culture-dependent hierarchical relations between foreground
and background (salient and non-salient elements) can be imitated in the sequence of
the descriptive discourse with the salient foreground coming first; something similar
applies to processes of perspectival perception (the discourse following a focalizer’s
gaze). Although the occurrence of such iconicity is not very frequent in fiction, its ex-
istence must be stressed in the face of contrary statements such as Cobley’s (see 1986:
398f.) and Bal’s, for whom only “[n]arrative fragments are iconic” (1981/1982: 108).
Such a denial of the possibility of descriptive iconicity is not only erroneous with
reference to literature, but even more so with reference to what escapes an exclusively
literary theory of description, namely a non-literary medium such as painting.
54 Werner Wolf
Yet, Meir Sternberg, in one of the best discussions of the ordering

principles of verbal description, aptly entitled “Ordering the Unor-
dered” (1981), rightly pointed out that for many objects of description
such iconic ordering is difficult or impossible and that therefore the
“linear progress is intrinsically unordered” (61; cf. also Cobley 1986:
398f.). Consequently, extrinsic alternatives should be found. One non-
iconic, ‘symbolic’ alternative would be to follow a logical or concep-
tual order dictated by cultural conventions, e. g., in Western culture,
describing objects from left to right, or, even more importantly, start-
ing with the general and then going into particulars (see Sternberg
1981: 70). The latter sequence corresponds to the logical steps which
Jean-Michel Adam sees at work in verbal descriptions but which in
effect may also shape their internal organization: the first, general
step is what he calls “ancrage”, the ‘anchoring’ of the description in
cultural knowledge; this is followed by the unfolding of particular
aspects of the object (“aspectualisation”), which, in a third step, are
related to each other and to other objects (“mise en relation” [Adam
1993: 104-113, cf. also Adam 1997/2005: 81-95]). Another option
could be to adopt a “medium-oriented ordering” (Sternberg 1980: 87)
such as following an “idiomatic sequence in verbal discourse” (ibid.:
87) or a “phonic” and “morphological” pattern of language (ibid.: 65).
We must now come back to yet another problem which is of
particular relevance to verbal media and which has already been men-
tioned in the discussion of descriptive markers, namely the problem of
motivating descriptions within larger narrative wholes. In verbal
media, description, as already stated, is usually a sub-frame occurring
alongside other frames on the micro-level. Therefore, the question of
the motivation for descriptions is here much more pressing than in the
pictorial medium. This is all the more so as descriptions, and in par-
ticular extensive ones, tend to interrupt the story-line and are there-
fore not infrequently skipped by the impatient reader, eager for action
and adventures.
Fiction has handled the problem of motivation68 differently
throughout history. The easiest way was relegating the motivation to
mere convention: up to the nineteenth century it was, for example, a
standard practice that main characters received an en-bloc description
68
For a theoretical discussion of the motivation of descriptions in fiction drawing on
Hamon 1972 see Bal 1981/1982: 105-110; Bal distinguishes “three types of
[character-centred] motivation”: “looking, speaking, or acting” (108).
by the narrator at their first appearance in the storyworld, and some-

thing analogous became almost a rule in nineteenth-century fiction
with reference to the description of settings. A more ‘advanced’ moti-
vation, which was also frequently used in nineteenth-century fiction
as well as later on, in particular in modernism, was linking descrip-
tions to the internal perspective of focalizers or ‘reception figures’.
Characters looking out of a window, men gazing at themselves while
shaving in front of a mirror, tourists admiring a scenic landscape, all
of this can serve as a justification for a plausible insertion of a de-
scription into a narrative whole. Thomas Hardy, for instance, likes to
introduce anonymous visitors as focalizers69, whose gazes serve as
pretexts for extensive initial descriptions of relevant settings where
the main characters have not yet been introduced. Such a visitor or
“rambler” occurs, for instance, in the extract from the opening lines of
his novel The Woodlanders quoted above, in chapter 2.1. Interest-
ingly, Hardy’s reception figure – through a tiny detail in the discourse
– may at the same time be seen to provide a motivation for the readers
to visit, in their imagination, such a “forsaken” stretch of land, for he
is said to “trace the forsaken coach-road” “for old association’s sake”
(Hardy 1887/1998: 5). The very first line of Hardy’s novel thus be-
trays, as motivating part of the following landscape description, some-
thing of the nostalgia with which the vanishing rural life of what
Hardy called his native ‘Wessex’ was perceived in his fiction.
This obviously leads to the question of the specific functions of
descriptions in fiction. Although descriptions are often perceived as
mere ornaments of narratives – and even narratologists such as
Genette have held this view70 – they are clearly not ‘superfluous’
elements nor mere backgrounds to narration that simply give hetero-
referential information on the setting as a stage for the characters and
the action; rather, descriptions fulfil a number of further and more
important functions, depending on historical conventions and world-
views.
The most obvious among these functions is certainly – in continua-
tion of the use of description in classical rhetoric – to enrich the per-
ceptual appeal of a narrative text and thus to enhance its experiential
as well as persuasive quality. Descriptions thus provide, so to speak,
food for the recipient’s imagination and serve an important reader-
69
For the employment of such ‘hypothetical focalization’ see Herman 2002: chap. 8.
70
See Genette 1969: 58, where he speaks of a ‘decorative’ function of description.
56 Werner Wolf
response function. As mentioned above, owing to the conceptual flex-

ibility of the medium narrative fiction, all sensory domains can in
principle be addressed by verbal descriptions. However, there seems
to be a ‘natural’, perhaps anthropological tendency to privilege what
the term ‘imagination’ already implies, namely the visual. The extract
from The Woodlanders bears witness to this, but the general fre-
quency of detailed visual descriptions in Hardy and other nineteenth-
century novelists also show a cultural-historical trend at work: the
general tendency towards enhanced visualization and maximally in-
tensified (visual) aesthetic illusion which can be observed not only in
the fiction of this period.
In Hardy’s Wessex novels (to which The Woodlanders belongs)
but also in Scott’s Scottish novels, the loving care of descriptive de-
tail frequently served an additional purpose, in particular when refer-
ring to traditional rural or regional phenomena: namely preserving
something at least in fiction that was felt to be endangered by the
progress of modernization in reality. The informative function of de-
scription is thus here tinged with a certain nostalgia and receives
additional weight through it.
The experiential enhancement which goes along with descriptions,
the fact that they generally interrupt the narrative flow, as well as the
tendency that they do not occur at random in a text but at certain
characteristic points gesture towards yet another function, which one
may call relief-giving or ‘architectural’ function: descriptions can also
be used to structure a narrative by setting off important scenes pre-
sented in the mode of ‘showing’ (which are the ones readers tend to
remember) as opposed to summaries, which mostly deal with less im-
portant material and are transmitted in the mode of ‘telling’.
Descriptions also serve the purpose of contributing to the explana-
tion of story elements71. This was particularly important in realism,
for the setting, be it natural or social, was conceived of as determining
the characters and their lives to a large extent. Informing the reader
about the details of the milieu in which the characters lived therefore
was tantamount to explaining them. This explanatory function of de-
scription in realism, however, is only one possible realization of what
71
Cf. Genette 1969: 58: “La seconde grande fonction de la description [...] est
d’ordre à la fois explicatif et symbolique”, and Hamon 1972: 483, who speaks of de-
scription as ‘unveiling’ the character of fictional persons; for the relationship between
physiognomic description and ‘character-reading’ see also Wolf 2002a and 2002d.
is arguably the most important function of descriptions in narrative

fiction anyway: they are privileged places for conveying comments
on, and interpretations of, the story with its setting, action and charac-
ters (cf. Ricardou 1967: 19; Riffaterre 1981: 125) and can generally
be said to enhance textual meaning72. This can, for instance, be seen
in the following excerpt from a nineteenth-century Gothic novel by
Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), in which an embed-
ded story about an innocent young woman named Immalee/Isidora is
quoted. This woman is on her way to marry the eponymous hero, an
undead evil man who is doomed to wander on earth for 150 years in
search of a victim who is ready to sell his or her soul to him.
They were now in the open country, – a region far wilder to Isidora than the
flowery paths of that untrodden isle [her former dwelling place], where she had no
enemy. Now in every breeze she heard a menacing voice [...] she gazed around
her, and tried to distinguish the objects near; but the intense darkness of the night
rendered this almost impossible […] They seemed to be walking on a narrow and
precipitous path close by a shallow stream, as they could guess by the hoarse and
rugged sound of its waters, as they fought with every pebble to win their way.
This path was edged on the other side by a few trees, whose stunted growth, and
branches tossing wild and wide to the blast that now began to whisper mournfully
among them, seemed to banish every image of a summer night from the senses
[...] ‘[...] are these indeed the winds of heaven that sigh around me? [...]’ she ex-
claimed, as Melmoth, apparently disturbed by these words, attempted to hurry her
on [...] her fears increasing, she wildly exclaimed, ‘Where is the priest to bless our
union? [...]’ (Maturin 1820/1977: 506-508 [my underlinings]).
This scene of wild nature illustrates many technical features of de-
scriptions, e. g. the emphasis on a plurality of metonymic details, as
well as typically verbal ones, e. g. its dynamic quality, which con-
forms to the conditions of the verbal medium used. It also illustrates
several typical functions of literary descriptions. For instance, it
‘paints’ an interesting setting (at least for contemporary readers),
creates a weird, ‘gothic’ atmosphere, contributes to the suspense trig-
gered by the framing action, and generally enhances the aesthetic
illusion or ‘immersion’ of the reader. Yet it would be unsatisfactory to
functionally restrict this description to just these facets of reader
response. What is most important in our context is the fact that it
establishes one of those correspondences between landscape and psy-
chological states (Korrespondenzlandschaften) which have become a
72
It is, however, exaggerated and one-sided to reduce such meaning, as Beaujour
(1981) has done, to an affinity between description and allegory (see 42), nor is it ten-
able to claim that “Western description always points to transcendent meanings” (54).
58 Werner Wolf
staple in fiction (as well as in lyric poetry) since Romanticism and

have been taken over by other media, notably film. The correspond-
ence is here between the seeming agitation of outer nature (see
underlined phrases) and the alarmed heroine’s psyche73, but the de-
scription also serves as a correlative of fate’s or God’s warning to
Isidora not to marry Melmoth, the evil wanderer. Thus, rather than
merely describing visual and in this case predominantly acoustic phe-
nomena, the description gives an interpretation of the planned wed-
ding as something dangerous which displeases heaven and so fore-
shadows part of the ensuing action: Isidora becomes extremely un-
happy, gives birth to Melmoth’s baby (which dies after a short time),
falls victim to the Inquisition and finally dies herself.
In sum, as the manifold (informative, experiential, ‘architectural’,
explanatory and generally interpretive) functions enumerated above
imply – and this list is not at all complete74 –, descriptions are crucial
elements of verbal narratives. They do not only merit critical atten-
tion, and perhaps more so than has been bestowed on them so far, but
should also be more focussed upon in the teaching of literature – as
passages that should not be skipped but often yield important clues
for the meaning, the cultural and historical position of a text.
3.3. Description in (instrumental) music75

Among the classical sister arts, poetry, painting and music, the latter,
and in particular instrumental music, generally seems to be the least
descriptive, as is evident in the lexicon of the English language: while
verbs such as ‘to depict’ and ‘to describe’ point to an apparently in-
73
Maturin’s narrator is himself explicit about this correspondence when he states on
another occasion: “[...] we love to connect the agitation of the elements with the agi-
tated life of man [...].” (Maturin 1820/1977: 108)
74
Besides the functions mentioned here (information on story-world elements, inter-
preting the setting, characters and action, contributing to the structure or ‘architecture’
of the text, influencing various reader responses) a more systematic list should also
provide slots for the fact that descriptions can, for instance, also fulfil a metatextual
function (as in the above-mentioned nouveau roman) and contribute to the implied
norms and worldview (for – albeit also unsystematic – functional surveys see Th.
Kullmann 1995: 469 and D. Kullmann 2004: 687-689).
75
This chapter is a revised version of Wolf 2007c forthcoming. My thanks are due
to my colleague from the musicological department of the University of Graz, Mi-
chael Walter, for valuable suggestions, in particular on Richard Strauss.
herent descriptive potential of the pictorial medium as well as the

verbal media (in particular those using writing), there is no equivalent
referring to music, no expression like ‘to desound’. In fact, owing to
its medial quality, music has intrinsic difficulties with the frame ‘de-
scription’, at first sight one is even inclined to say more so than with
‘narrative’ and, at any rate, more than the verbal media. For it is not
only the Laokoon-problem (the alleged incompatibility between tem-
poral, ‘dynamic’ media and description conceived of as centred on
static objects) that in this respect besets music, since this problem also
applies to verbal art, which has been shown to have a high descriptive
potential nevertheless. Instrumental music has yet another and more
fundamental problem with description: it is a problem that goes be-
yond music’s temporal medial nature. Music resists the frame ‘de-
scription’ (as well as the frame ‘narrative’) because it is the most
abstract and non-referential medium of all the arts and media, and
it is therefore sometimes claimed that a piece of music does not
consist of signs at all, in other words that music has no semiotic qual-
ity like verbal language (see Harweg et al. 1967: 394). One should,
however, be more precise, for music can be said to be ‘referential’,
but mainly in the sense of ‘self-referential’ rather than of ‘hetero-
referential’. The reason for this is that music consists mainly of signs
whose signification resides in their ability to point to other signifiers
within the same system, usually by iconically imitating or repeating
them (but also by forming contrasts to them). Indeed, the occurrences
of the theme in the individual voices of a fugue or the transformations
of a theme in a composition ‘theme with variations’ are self-
referentially related to each other76 through such iconic aural simi-
larity, but what can a fugue or a theme with variations describe? The
very question seems beside the point.
And yet, there are compositions, particularly in nineteenth- and
early-twentieth-century Western art music, that purport to be descrip-
tive and, for instance, are called ‘symphonic poems’, thus pointing by
their very name not only to lyrical expressivity but also to lyrical
descriptiveness. In 1911 Michel Brenet published an essay with the
revealing title “Essai sur les origines de la musique descriptive”
(Brenet 1911), and his contemporary Richard Strauss was firmly con-
vinced that one can, ‘of course, paint with tones and sounds’. Strauss
76
The same is true of the many ‘verbatim’ repetitions which abound in music and do
not have a counterpart in the visual arts or in literature (except for lyrical refrains).
60 Werner Wolf
is even said to have claimed that a genuine musician ought to be able

to compose a restaurant menu (see Krause 1963/1979: 216f.). While
this latter claim may not necessarily be taken seriously, the conviction
which Strauss in fact shared or shares with many other composers and
listeners, namely that music can in fact be descriptive, cannot so
easily be disregarded.
Some conditions, of course, apply – and in music there are cer-
tainly more conditions and restrictions than in most other media. A
first condition which one may think of immediately must be men-
tioned, but only in order to be instantly dismissed: it is the idea that
musical descriptiveness depends on a heavy use of a potential in
which music is often considered to excel, namely emotional expres-
sivity. Franz Liszt, one of the principal proponents of both the ‘sym-
phonic poem’ (see Altenburg 1998) and ‘programme music’ and
indeed the inventor of both terms, is known – to quote from the re-
nowned New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians – not to have
“regard[ed] music as a direct means of describing objects; rather he
thought that music could put the listener in the same frame of mind as
could the objects themselves. In this way, by suggesting the emotional
reality of things, music could indirectly represent them” (Scruton
2001: 396).
This view is intriguing, and one may concede that musical expressiv-
ity may, under certain circumstances, indeed contribute to description
by evoking typical, culturally coded moods, atmospheres, etc. which
may be attached to descriptive objects such as a ‘peaceful’ pastoral
landscapes or a ‘sublime’ mountain scene. Yet, ultimately Liszt’s
view rests on a confusion, or rather a short-circuiting, of subject-
centred responses and object-centred reference. If a verbal text or a
musical composition for that matter is to describe anything at all, the
expression of an emotional response to the object described can only
be an addition to a description but can never replace a reference to
the object itself – for how could the recipient otherwise know what
object has elicited the emotional reaction expressed77? In fact, as
77
See Scruton 2001 in his excellent article on “Programme music”; Scruton also in-
sists on the distinction between (descriptive) reference and expression by rightly
pointing out that “description may or may not be accompanied by an expression of
feeling” and that “there can be expressions of emotion that are not accompanied by
representation” (397). In terms of Jakobson’s functions of language (see 1960) the
same differentiation can be made by referring to the ‘referential function’ as necessary
for description, while the ‘emotive function’ is a merely optional addition.
stated above, in chapter 2.4, in all descriptions, and this includes

musical ones, an object-centred reference is dominant and indispensa-
ble, while subject-centred expression is subdominant and need not be
explicit78.
The principal (pre-)condition of musical descriptiveness is thus the
fulfilment of an essential feature of all descriptions, namely that
music should be able to refer to phenomena other than itself, in other
words that it can be ‘hetero-referential’. Now, most scholars agree
that hetero-referentiality is very untypical of music. Nevertheless,
music does have some possibilities of pointing to extra-musical ob-
jects – independently of expressivity (which may be regarded as an
indexical use of signs). This is a complex and frequently discussed
problem of musical semiotics, which cannot be retraced here in all its
intricacies79. I will therefore limit my remarks to some general vari-
ants of musical hetero-referentiality that are particularly relevant to
description.
What comes to mind here first is what has traditionally been called
in German Tonmalerei, ‘sound painting’. However, the term covers a
plurality of aspects (see Altenburg 1997: 1827) so that some specifi-
cations are necessary. Its most common denotation refers to sugges-
tions of musical iconicity of various kinds80, degrees of intensity,
extension and directness. In its potential to signify through iconicity
78
The importance of such object-centred reference can even be corroborated by a
famous statement of Beethoven’s, although this may not be obvious at first sight. For
Beethoven, who with his sixth symphony is generally considered to be one of the out-
standing precursors of intensely descriptive music, emphasized expression when he
claimed that his symphony was ‘more the expression of emotions than a painting’
(“mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Mahlerey” [quoted from Kloiber 1964: 89]).
Significantly, the wording of this statement does not deny the presence of descriptive
‘Malerei’ altogether.
79
For more details concerning the semiotic problem of whether music is a language,
is only similar to verbal language or is no language at all, see, among other works,
Dahlhaus 1979; Kleeman 1985; Nattiez 1987/1990; Kaden/Brachmann/Giese 1998;
Wolf 1999: chap. 2.3.
80
For the different kinds of iconicity (sensory or ‘imagic’, diagrammatic, and meta-
phorical or ‘semantic’) see Fischer/Nänny 1999 (their typology was, however, devised
with reference to verbal language, but can also be transferred to music). It should be
noted that musical iconicity – as iconicity in general for that matter – is a classifica-
tion of signs that centres on the most obvious ‘surface’ use of signifiers and does not
exclude that they at the same time show covert affiliations to indexical or symbolic
signs.
62 Werner Wolf
music is similar to painting and dissimilar to verbal media (this is also

why Walton 1990: 333-337 speaks of “Musical depictions”). As
music is an aural phenomenon, the obvious and most direct actuali-
zation of such iconicity, which is said to have existed in the music of
all times and forms (see Kloiber 1967: 1), is a variant of sensory
iconicity, namely the imitation of extramusical sounds by musical
means. The resulting “aural mimicry”, to use a term coined by
Carolyn Abbate (1991: 33), is – on the basis of cultural knowledge
which is responsible for additional symbolic and indexical shades of
meaning of the musical signs in question – often seemingly self-
explanatory and does not require the clarifying aid of words. This
applies, for example, to bird song, animal cries, thunderstorms and
similar sounds, some of which have been incorporated, for example,
in the description of a pastoral scene in Beethoven’s sixth symphony,
entitled ‘Pastorale’81. ‘Aural mimicry’ can also evoke space as a basic
dimension of many objects of descriptions: in performances, the ac-
tual location of instruments can thus be used to denote ‘stereophonic’
left-right and ‘dolby-surround’ (foreground–background or ‘echo’) ef-
fects (as exemplified in the ‘dialogue’ of two ‘pastoral’ wood instru-
ments in the third movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique)82.
Tonmalerei can also go beyond a more or less direct imitation of
sensory phenomena and employ more indirect kinds of similarity (ico-
nicity). One possibility is to arrange musical signifiers so that their
sequence mimes the sequence of the phenomena referred to. This
‘diagrammatic iconicity’ can be used, for instance, to illustrate a
sunrise by melodies and harmonies that gradually ‘rise’ from initial
‘dark’ and ‘low’ sounds to ‘higher’ and ‘clearer’ ones till they reach a
81
The imitation of the call of a cuckoo in Beethoven’s composition is a good exam-
ple of the semiotic complexity involved in this kind of musical hetero-reference: while
on the surface it is, of course, a form of aural iconicity, it at the same time implies in-
dexicality (the call suggests the imaginary presence of the bird) but also – through
connotations – a symbolic use of signs, for the cuckoo implies the culturally codified
connotations of spring and/or rural scenery, which are central to Beethoven’s descrip-
tive and expressive purpose.
82
A more indirect form of musical reference through Tonmalerei is visual iconicity
or Augenmusik (music for the eye). In this variant, which is, however, not very impor-
tant for musical description, a relation of similarity is established not between an
object and music as an acoustic phenomenon, but as a written code. A famous exam-
ple is Johann Sebastian Bach’s repeated employment of a sharp – in German Kreuz
(cross) – as a reference to Christ’s cross.
‘bright’ climax in a fortissimo major chord (see Michael Walter’s

contribution to this volume).
As can be seen from the many terms put in inverted commas in the
example of musically describing a sunrise, diagrammatic iconicity as
well as other kinds of using music in a referential way is often
combined with, or based on, what are actually metaphors attached to
sounds: conventional semantic valeurs, such as ‘low’ and ‘high’,
‘slow’ and ‘fast’, ‘dull’ and ‘clear’, etc. that are attributed to what
after all are mere physical qualities of melody, harmony, speed,
rhythm, loudness and timbre which could be described in quite differ-
ent terms (such as wavelength, frequency and intensity). The resulting
metaphoric illustration is actually a kind of ‘metaphoric iconicity’,
that is, of using iconic similarities between a conventionalized vehicle
that is linked to an extra-musical tenor owing to some common de-
nominator or tertium comparationis and permits a reference to an
extra-musical object. An example of such metaphoric illustration that
refers to conventions connected with certain musical phenomena is
the description of running water (e. g. a brook) by ‘fast’, ‘wavy’
melodical lines (using the spatial metaphor of ‘rising’ and ‘falling’
melodies); another one is the illustration of spatial effects of distance
(or echo), which can also be achieved independently of an actual re-
mote position of the echo-instrument by simply repeating or ‘answer-
ing’ (another of the many ‘sunk’ metaphors used in the verbalization
of music) with a markedly reduced loudness. While in some cases the
referentiality is clear, owing to well-known cultural conventions,
others will be less obvious than in “aural mimicry”, and therefore
metaphorical iconicity tends to occur more frequently in vocal than in
instrumental music. Thus, in Bach’s cantatas and passions, falling
single notes in the accompaniment can refer to falling tears83, a racing
sequence of notes may evoke the idea of running, and twisting
melodies can point to a snake, frequently as a symbol of the devil84. In
such illustrations music and words cooperate in a more or less parallel
way, which could even be said to result in a certain redundancy if it
83
The conventionality on which metaphorical illustration usually rests can here be
seen in the fact that the spatialization of ‘high’ vs. ‘low’ sounds, and consequently the
fall of a melody is an at least partially arbitrary imposition on acoustic phenomena
which is in itself already metaphorical.
84
For a classic discussion of Bach’s musical descriptiveness see Schweitzer 1908/
1972: chap. XX “Dichterische und malerische Musik”, as well as chaps. XXI-
XXXIII.
64 Werner Wolf
were not that the musical illustration added a concrete dimension to

the more abstract verbal reference85.
A yet remoter, even more conventional means of eliciting refer-
entiality in music that can also contribute to descriptions is the em-
ployment of acoustic connotations through the use of the musical
equivalent to ‘intertextuality’: ‘intermusicality’. Descriptive ‘intermu-
sicality’ (which is a special kind of iconicity, since it imitates music
in music) can function by means of evoking individual compositions
or, more frequently, typical genres or kinds of music86. Thus situa-
tions, ‘scripts’ or cognitive frames can be referred to which are con-
ventionally associated with certain sounds, musical instruments and
forms. For example, in a nineteenth-century symphony the sound of
horns (a generic imitation of a particular real-life use of specific
musical instruments) may evoke a hunting scene through an associa-
tion of ideas (as in the third movement of Bruckner’s Fourth Sym-
phony); a Ländler played by an orchestra including a clarinet may
recall a rural scene (a form of generic intermusical reference that
occurs in the third movement, Allegro/“Lustiges Zusammensein der
Landleute” of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony). And a hymn (an imita-
tion of real-life vocal music) can elicit the frame ‘church service’ (as
in the fourth movement of Schumann’s Rheinische[r] Symphonie
[Rhenish Symphony]); sometimes the quotation of the melody of a
vocal composition can also, through ‘intermedial association’, evoke
the corresponding words87, thus introducing yet another dimension of
signification into an instrumental composition. Even though such
acoustic connotations are usually also based on ‘aural mimicry’ they
85
For a recent, more extended discussion of musical reference by means of iconicity
see Georis 2005.
86
The categories of ‘individual intermusical reference’ as opposed to ‘generic inter-
musical reference’ correspond to equivalent notions in literary intertextuality theory
(see Broich/Pfister, eds. 1985). In either case the hetero-referentiality potentially re-
sulting indirectly from such basically intra-medial self-reference can emerge from
cultural connotations (and hence a symbolic use of signs) that are attached to the mu-
sical pretext and are ‘imported’ into the ‘quoting’ composition alongside the intermu-
sical reference.
87
This device (in technical terms, a ‘partial reproduction’ of a work transmitted in
another [sub-]medium or genre) is restricted to individual references and is a recipro-
cal equivalent of the “evocation of vocal music through associative [verbal] quota-
tion” which I have used elsewhere in the context of devices that are conducive to a
‘musicalization of fiction’ (Wolf 1999: chap. 4.5.).
go beyond the mere identification or illustration of a given phenom-

enon. Like painterly topothesia they rather operate on the principle of
metonymic pars pro toto: the imitation of individual acoustic ele-
ments of the phenomena described are meant to trigger entire scripts
or cognitive frames88. Thus, a popular melody occurring in a sympho-
ny, may, for instance, not principally be meant to imitate a specific
song but to point to the context in which such a song is conventionally
supposed to occur89.
Considering these various devices of musical hetero-reference,
music, including instrumental music, can certainly not be said to be
entirely incapable of pointing beyond itself. Yet, are these devices of
reference per se already descriptive? In spite of what the term Tonma-
lerei – literally ‘sound painting’ – may imply, I would like to contend
that this is not the case. A repeated imitation of the call of a cuckoo in
eighteenth-century harpsichord music is, for instance, not a descrip-
tion of this bird but a mere reference to it. For according to what has
been said above, description implies reference but also requires attri-
butions that specify some concrete object and go beyond mere identi-
fication. Nonetheless, all of the devices just mentioned may contrib-
ute to what may in fact be termed musical descriptiveness, provided
they establish such attributions, preferably multiple, varied and com-
plex ones. It is clear that this conception of musical description sub-
stantially restricts the historical range of its occurrence and excludes
many pre-nineteenth-century extramusical references that identify, but
do not describe, extramusical phenomena. Yet, all of this does not
banish instrumental music from the realm of the descriptive altogeth-
er. For, in particular in nineteenth- and twentieth-century programme
music (including symphonic poems), there are several examples of an
extended use of musical hetero-reference that may indeed be said to
form musical descriptions.
A case in point is Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine
Symphony), first performed in 1915. This 50-minute composition,
88
This is also a process that is typical of the reception of descriptions in general (see
Nünning’s contribution to this volume).
89
The descriptive potential of such musical connotations, for which once again
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (in the third movement, Allegro “Lustiges Zusammen-
sein der Landleute”) provides an example, is based on cultural competence (one must
be able, for example, to identify the popular character of the music) and on the recipi-
ent’s imagination – and this to a far greater extent than other devices of musical
hetero-reference.
66 Werner Wolf
which requires a gigantic orchestra of more than 120 instruments, in-

cluding organ, wind machines and cow bells, follows a vaguely
narrative programme and thus constitutes an example of programme
music90: we seem to follow the stream of consciousness of an anony-
mous agency, whose several activities, impressions and expressive
reactions to his or her experiences are rendered by musical means91.
The programme consists in the ascent of a mountain with a climactic
reaching of the summit followed by a descent. This simple narrative
outline is the framework into which several descriptive scenes are set,
and this illustrates a typical relation between narrative and description
familiar from fiction and other narrative media, namely the sub-
ordination of description to the narrative. Among these scenes there is
also a section entitled “Auf der Alm” (‘On the mountain pasture’), on
which I would like to concentrate briefly.
As one can hear in particular in the first minute and a half of this
‘scene’, Strauss here combines two devices of suggesting musical
hetero-reference. There is, firstly, aural mimicry of various kinds (the
imitation of natural phenomena and, by means of generic intermusi-
cality, the imitative reference to instrumental as well as to vocal
music): we hear bird song, cow bells, a yodel (‘Jodler’) and a Länd-
ler. And there is, secondly, the suggestion of rural peace by means of
(symbolic) connotations: this concerns the evocation of a rustic milieu
through all of the items of aural mimicry and generic intermusical
reference just mentioned, but above all the generally peaceful atmos-
phere of the passage produced by appropriate dynamic, melodic,
rhythmic and harmonic means. As opposed to the isolated references
to extra-musical phenomena sometimes encountered in older music,
we are thus confronted here with a relatively complex sequence of
referential attributions (the presence of birds, cows, and farmers to-
gether with a certain atmosphere) that coalesce into the evocation of a
natural scenery, hence an external reality, and thus appear indeed to
be eligible as a musical description.
90
If one calls the composition ‘programme music’, one employs the term in a broad
sense and includes also non-literary programmes (for this broad meaning see Alten-
burg 1997: 1822, for whom the term suffers from a ‘babylonian confusion of lan-
guage’ [1821]); for a classification as a symphonic poem or a Tondichtung see Kloi-
ber 1967: 189 and Walter 2000: 150. On the problematics of the term ‘programme
music’ in general, see below, note 96.
91
Part of these means is the employment of Wagnerian leitmotifs.
Yet, if description is a cognitive frame that needs to be activated,

what is it that triggers the idea of description here in the first place?
This question implies the further question of how to recognize a
musical description when being confronted with one, in other words
to the issue of ‘markers of musical description’. This is a problem
which has not as yet received sufficient critical attention. With re-
ference to fiction as well as to the visual media, it is perhaps not
obvious as a problem at all, for in both kinds of media the presence of
description appears to be self-explanatory and ‘self-signalling’. Yet,
even there, markers or at least clear symptoms are common. These
include, for instance, the frequent device of building a moment of rest
into a narrative (a character’s gaze during a pause in a travelogue, a
view from a mountain top or through a window, etc.) which motivates
the interruption occurring by the ensuing description, or the change
from the syntagmatic narration of ever new elements to a typically
descriptive multiplicity of paradigmatic attributions that are all cen-
tred on one and the same object. In music, where description is cer-
tainly less self-explanatory, such markers appear to be even more
important and deserve special attention. This is all the more so as
there is always the ‘danger’ of ‘misreading’ descriptive passages as
(parts of) a purely abstract, non-referential and hence non-descriptive
musical composition.
In view of this ‘danger’ an important means of signalling descrip-
tive referentiality consists in urging the recipient to abandon the
default option ‘music follows its own logic’ by simply denying such
musical logic. This can be done by departing from established musical
forms in a seemingly ‘inexplicable’ way or by not adopting any re-
ceived form, including the usual musical self-referentiality, in the first
place, thus barring a traditional access to music92. This is largely the
case in Eine Alpensinfonie, for in spite of the title and the employ-
92
Strauss, however, would not have agreed with this, since, as Dahlhaus reports (see
1978: 137), he opposed the idea that programme music was formless if it did not fol-
low schematic forms and insisted on the fact that a ‘poetic programme’ can lead to
new forms. Dahlhaus himself seems to adopt this view (see 2002: 694f.). Yet, the
mere existence of some kind of form even in heavily descriptive or narrative music is
not the point: it is the nature of this form which counts, for it is mainly ‘schematic’,
that is, pre-existing and well-known forms (and not new ones) that can function as
an orientation for recipients to navigate through a composition, while newly devised
forms do not support this orientational function with the same ease, and this seems to
be the case with Strauss.
68 Werner Wolf
ment of themes and motives, the composition does not show sym-
phonic form, let alone sonata form, nor any other conventional form.
As a result, the listener is challenged to find an alternative principle
of coherence – which the narrative and descriptive programme in fact
offers. It is, however, clear that such a procedure is not without its
problems, for the absence of traditional musical form – if it is
perceived at all by the average listener – need not necessarily point to
an extra-musical reference but could just be regarded as uncon-
ventional or experimental and perhaps even notably self-referential
music. In addition, the lack of conventional intramusical form alone
would not suffice to point to certain descriptive rather than, for in-
stance, narrative contents93. This problem of enabling the listener to
correctly ‘decode’ a given passage is all the more difficult as descrip-
tive passages are sometimes, if less frequently than in narrative fiction
(in Eine Alpensinfonie but also in Smetana’s “Die Moldau”/“Vlatva”
from Má vlast/Mein Vaterland), set into an overall narrative frame.
Thus, it is almost inevitable that in music descriptive reference
resorts to the verbal medium, in particular if the composer wants the
recipient to ‘hear’ specific objects described. Explanatory words can
help here in two distinct ways. The first is the integration of words
into the composition itself, as in the lied, in opera and other kinds of
vocal music. Where this option is not given, as is typically the case in
nineteenth-century instrumental programme music, a second option
may apply: it consists in using the medium of words in the ‘framing’
of the composition. This can be done, minimally, in its title (as exem-
plified by Eine Alpensinfonie94), but also in more remote ‘paratexts’,
e. g. explanatory essays in concert programmes or other publications.
Thus, Richard Strauss had the titles of the individual sections of his
Alpensinfonie printed in the concert programme of the first perfor-
93
The ‘deviation argument’ (deviation from formal musical conventions as a symp-
tom of [intended] musical referentiality) has in fact been used in the context of poten-
tial incentives for listeners to apply the frame ‘narrative’; see Walter 2000: 151, and
Micznik 2001: 246, 248.
94
Genette (1999) calls such evocative titles, by which music signals a thematic
attempt at ‘becoming text’ (“se faire texte elle-même” [116]), “titres thématiques”
(111). Cf., for the use of such ‘thematic’ (rather than ‘rhematic’) titels also, e. g.,
Mussorgsky’s Pictures of an Exhibition, whose title suggests that this composition is
a special case of musical description, namely a series of musical equivalents to
‘ekphrasis’; the titles of the individual segments (such as “Il vecchio castello” or
“Catacombs”) form further markers of intended descriptivity.
mance (Dresden, Oct. 28, 1915), which also included an essay by his
friend Max Steinitzer entitled “Thematische Einführung” (‘Thematic
Introduction’, see Walter 2000: 148).
In addition to these markers, a descriptive gesture in music can, of
course, also be signalled if any of the afore-mentioned devices of
musical hetero-referentiality is employed with a salient frequency or
if such devices occur in combination with each other and thus also
reach a salient, unusual quantity. For, as already said, a certain
amount of details is one of the typical features of descriptions. Yet,
the difficulty presented by this marker, as well as by others, is again
the possibility of pointing to musical narrativity rather than to descrip-
tiveness.
This once again raises the problem of the relationship between
description and narrative. In music, this problem is at least as
thorny as the question of musical hetero-referentiality – the difference
being that this problem is not even recognized as such in most musi-
cological research, in which the terms ‘description’ and ‘narration’
are frequently used indiscriminately (including the relevant articles in
the New Grove Dictionary of Music, cf. also Scruton 2001 and
Macdonald 200195). One motivation for blurring the two frames may
be their frequent co-occurrence not only in fiction and other media
but also in music. This points to an important facet of the problem of
distinguishing between musical narrativity and descriptivity, namely
the question of whether both frames can occur independently of each
other or only simultaneously in one and the same composition. From a
historical perspective it seems that in music, as opposed to the paint-
erly medium, both frames can in fact occur independently. Yet, there
are no musical compositions that are predominantly descriptive, let
alone entirely so, before the emergence of the symphonic poem
towards the mid-nineteenth century. All earlier occurrences of Tonma-
lerei were restricted to isolated pockets within larger compositions,
usually non-narrative ones, as in the cases of musical illustration in
the Baroque age. In instrumental music of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries musical description tends to appear in combi-
nation with musical narrativity. Musical descriptions were then
frequently integrated into compositions that attempted to realize a
95
Cf. also Genette 1999, who in his discussion of musical references to, and imita-
tions of, literature does not distinguish between (narrative) “romances sans paroles”
(title of his essay) and “poèmes sans paroles” (116) either.
70 Werner Wolf
larger narrative frame. Narrative ‘programme music’96 deserves to be

mentioned in particular, as in Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique
(which enacts the biography of an artist) or in Richard Strauss’s Eine
Alpensinfonie (which, as said above, recounts the ascent of a moun-
tain). With a view to the pre-nineteenth-century examples it is, how-
ever, necessary to repeat that in principle musical description can
occur independently of both the symphonic poem and programme
music forms, in which musical description has found its most exten-
sive and intense development in history to date.
These formal and historical considerations do, however, not yet
clarify the difficult identification of musical descriptiveness as op-
posed to musical narrativity from a theoretical, systematic point of
view. This identification is all the more difficult, as the temporal
nature of music tends to favour temporal objects of description, and
the presence of a temporal dimension is at the same time a sine qua
non of narrative97. I would like to propose two hopefully helpful
criteria of differentiation (which, of course, are only meaningful on
the basis of hetero-referential gestures in a given piece of instrumental
music). The first is the question of whether a given composition
suggests or does not suggest the presence of interacting characters or,
minimally, of one experiencing character in an intracompositional
possible world. While narrative necessitates such a presence, descrip-
tions – as mentioned above – can dispense with such agencies, even
without a describing consciousness as a part of the possible world
described. The second criterion refers to the question of whether a
given composition shows the presence of a teleological, goal-oriented
trajectory and, in connection with this, a motivated ending. The end-
ing of a story must somehow be connected to, and motivated by, a
96
There is no common agreement on the definition of ‘programme music’. The term
has been applied in a broad sense to all kinds of intensely descriptive extra-musical
references and has thus become similar to ‘symphonic poem’. In a narrower sense the
term is opposed to ‘symphonic poem’ in that it denotes a reference to a literary text
(see Kloiber 1967, who speaks of a “dichterische Vorlage” [‘poetic model’, 1] and
Scruton [2001: 307], who applies it to music following an extra-musical, usually lit-
erary “narrative or descriptive [concept] which [is] essential to the understanding”). If
‘programme music’ is restricted to translating a literary text into music or at least to
referring to it, it becomes an intermedial phenomenon, which can cover the fields of
intermedial transposition and imitative intermedial reference.
97
In verbal art, the same temporal nature does not lead to a confusion, as the seman-
tic surface of a text frequently is enough to differentiate between the two frames.
previous teleological development and thus is typically a logical

result, while the ending of a description can occur when its object has
been represented in a sufficiently vivid way. As ‘sufficiently vivid’ is
a highly debatable notion, the endings of descriptions tend to appear
as a-logical and arbitrary. In music, the ending of a description would
at best be motivated by aesthetic, compositional criteria but not refer-
entially. Compositions or parts of compositions that betray extramusi-
cal reference but imply neither a story-like trajectory nor interacting
characters can therefore not be regarded as narrative and may by de-
fault qualify as descriptive.
The negative quality of these criteria – the absence of a story-line
and of character correlatives – again highlights what we could repeat-
edly observe about descriptions in general, namely their relatively
loose internal organization. Descriptions do not typically show sus-
penseful developments towards conflicts nor do they have climaxes
and resolutions that lead to an ending98. Nevertheless, the presence (or
rather absence) of the aforementioned markers and a specific musical
texture permits us in fact to consider scenes like “Auf der Alm” as an
instance of musical description rather than narration (this scene is full
of hetero-referential gestures, but does not suggest interacting charac-
ters nor a teleological trajectory). This enables us to compare this
example with the descriptive extract from Melmoth the Wanderer
quoted in the previous chapter and also to comment on the descriptive
potentials and limitations of instrumental music in general. In the
musical as well as in the literary example a landscape is in focus and
arguably identified through multiple attributions. However, as is to be
expected, both the motivation for the description and the identifica-
tion of the scenery are much more precise in the literary example than
in the musical one.
As for the motivation, the literary text provides a plausible and
conventional reason for the insertion of the description at least in the
earlier part of the excerpt, namely by linking the description to the
focalizer Isidora, who has an obvious interest to learn where her
would-be husband is leading her. In contrast to this, the musical ex-
ample, as expected, does not provide any motivation at all, and so a
98
In literature, the same holds true for lyric poetry, although much of poetry can be
said to render the stream of consciousness of a human agent like stream-of-conscious-
ness fiction, but in the absence of events the content of lyric streams of consciousness
is usually different from that of narrative ones.
72 Werner Wolf
potential ‘rest’ of the wandering persona is at best a probabilistic

guess by the recipient.
As for the precision of the description, the differences are no less
obvious: while in the literary case the description refers to a (seem-
ingly) specific geographical region, in the musical case such specific-
ity is impossible. If one disregards the verbal framing of the musical
example, it would, strictly speaking, even be doubtful whether the
scene is really set in the mountains, for cow bells and bird song can
be heard, for instance, in the Bavarian lowlands too, which is basi-
cally also true of yodels (although the cultural connotations may
imply something different). This points to a general feature of music
as a potentially descriptive medium: owing to the medium-specific
limitations concerning hetero-referentiality (which excludes symbolic
signification, at least as far as denotation is concerned, and privileges
iconicity99) the scope of potential objects of description in music is
much more restricted than in a verbal medium, where the flexibility of
symbolic signification opens possibilities for the description of a
practically unlimited range of objects.
As for the vividness of the descriptive representation, one may
argue that the verbal example, even if read independently of its narra-
tive context, is apt to convey experientiality and perhaps also elicits
mental images that create a feeling of immersion and hence of
aesthetic illusion in the recipient. Even if it may be conceded that the
musical example can also convey a certain atmosphere (and, since at-
mosphere is largely a matter of emotion, does so more efficiently than
the verbal text), it is again doubtful whether Strauss’s musical de-
scription can really elicit aesthetic illusion. If it triggers something
like immersion at all, there seems to be a noteworthy difference in the
recipient’s share in this process as compared to fiction. While all
aesthetic illusion requires the cooperation of the recipient and some
experiential reservoir (some scripts that a text or artefact may
actualize), the literary text guides the process of illusion with more
authority than music. Strauss’s description in fact requires much more
imaginative reconstruction or construction on the part of the recipient
99
Strictly speaking, one could argue that one ought therefore not to use the term ‘to
describe’ for most of musical ‘depiction’; however, ‘description’ is so much a re-
ceived term for the transmedial frame under discussion that it would make little sense
to resort to another term such as ‘depiction’, which in turn could be criticized as a
misleading metaphor, since, again strictly speaking, music does not ‘paint’ either.
than Maturin’s. And arguably the results in individual recipients will

differ much more widely than the impression triggered by the literary
counterpart. For the very general stimuli of the music permit a wider
scope of variation than the more precise indications provided by the
verbal text.
The difference between the two media is even greater with
reference to another general function of descriptions, namely to con-
tribute to the construction of the meaning of the artefact as a whole. In
Strauss’s case the meaning of the scene on the alpine meadows is re-
stricted to conveying the idea of peacefulness and joy as a contrast to
the ensuing excitement when reaching the summit and experiencing a
subsequent thunderstorm. Considering the period of composition,
namely World War I, this peacefulness may also have a contrastive if
not compensatory reference to the cultural-historical context, but this
is already a mere guess. Maturin’s description, again, conveys mean-
ing in a more precise way, as explained in the previous chapter.
As has become clear, description is a potential of instrumental
music, albeit not a natural one. If this is so, one may ask what the ad-
vantages of description are which made instrumental music of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries venture into this problematic
realm in the first place.
There are several possible answers to this question of the func-
tional history (Funktionsgeschichte) of descriptive music100 (which
in this respect is closely connected to programme music). One of the
answers arguably lies in the looseness of organization which is
characteristic of description and which distinguishes it both from
narrative and even more so from the formal organization of traditional
musical genres. From a sociological perspective this looseness may
indeed be thought to have not least contributed to the attractiveness of
the symphonic poem and other genres of programme music in the
nineteenth century. For the reception of instrumental music gained a
hitherto unparalleled popularity in that period, and music appreciation
was expanded from a restricted and more or less elitist public to a
larger, middle-class audience. Among this expanded public the spe-
cialists formed a considerably smaller fraction than in earlier times.
This means that a larger part of the audience must have had increasing
100
As with questions of possible functions of works of art in general, one should,
however, bear in mind that answers in this field tend to be more or less convincing
theses rather than demonstrable (historical) facts.
74 Werner Wolf
difficulties in finding a purely formal or abstract access to music. In

addition, the public performance of instrumental music, formerly pre-
dominantly motivated by pragmatic purposes (such as contributing to
a religious service, or providing a ‘divertimento’ during a feast for
aristocrats), now increasingly took place in the de-pragmatized frame
of the concert hall (and could last several hours). The shift of the
burden of musical appreciation from intramusical, formal criteria that
required a specialist’s knowledge of genres and compositional devices
to more easily understandable extramusical ideas or ‘programmes’
(including nationalist ones as in Smetana’s Má vlast [see Altenburg
1998: 162]) may consequently have been regarded as a welcome de-
velopment. Rendering instrumental music more transparent for an
expanded public of non-specialists and thus forming what could be
termed ‘music lite’ was arguably one of the functions of musical de-
scriptiveness in the nineteenth century.
Yet, descriptive music can enhance the emotional and aesthetic
effect of highly sophisticated works, too, and is by far not restricted to
‘naive’ or ‘middle-brow’ compositions. After all, the readability of
musical reference, owing to the resistance of the medium, is in itself
not always easy, and in many cases even the deciphering of Tonmale-
rei presupposes considerable listening competence. It can therefore be
held that at least with reference to nineteenth-century programme
music, the emphasis on musical description can also be explained
with reference not only to the wishes of the less competent listeners
but also to those of the connoisseurs. For to them it may have been
not so much the wish to get an easier access to music but rather the
impression that traditional musical genres such as the symphony and
the concerto with their eternal sonata forms, tri-partite lied patterns or
rondos had been exhausted. This may have increased the desire for
something new. In this context the development towards programmat-
ically descriptive music must have appeared as a welcome and aes-
thetically satisfying alternative.
Another cultural factor one may think of in order to account for the
acceptability of descriptive music with the ‘highbrow’ culture, in
particular in the historical situation of the aftermath of Romanticism,
is the influential Romantic ideal of a ‘poeticized’ music, since it can
more easily be connected with the descriptive in music than the rival-
ling ideal of ‘absolute music’. Yet, Dahlhaus (see 1978: 128f.) has
pointed out with reference to nineteenth-century programme music
that the Romantic aesthetic of the poetic in music is not simply tan-
tamount to any kind of ‘literarization’ of music, for the poetic in

Romantic terms privileges the ‘marvellous’ and to that extent only
descriptions of such subjects would fall into the realm of Romantic
influence. However, in another publication Dahlhaus (see 1976: 89-
94) provides an interesting alternative solution. He convincingly
argues that the old privileging of vocal music over instrumental music
persisted well into the mid-nineteenth century (even though, one
should add, instrumental music had attained a hitherto unequalled
popularity). In addition, the educated middle class, which provided
the core of nineteenth-century musical amateurs, was largely litera-
ture-oriented; Dahlhaus even speaks of a cultural predominance of
literature (“Vorherrschaft der Literatur” [ibid.: 93]). In this context,
the ‘literarization’ of programme music, including the employment of
description in music, could (as was the fact with Franz Liszt) function
not only as a means of meeting the audience’s taste and enculturation
in this respect101 but also as a means of nobilitating instrumental
music through placing it in the vicinity of noble ‘poesy’ (“ein Mittel,
die Würde der Instrumentalmusik – den Anspruch, ‘Kultur’ und nicht
bloß [...] ‘Genuß’ zu sein – zu fundieren” [ibid.]102).
Be that as it may, the fact remains that descriptive music presented
an alternative to ‘absolute’ music that had – and has – an amazing
appeal and produced an equally remarkable body of compositions103.
Over and above historical considerations this at least testifies to an
important theoretical fact: namely that description is indeed a trans-
medial phenomenon in which both words and music participate, albeit
in different ways and to different degrees. Music’s potential in this
respect even seems to be greater than its narrative potential, since the
descriptive, in order to be discernible as a hetero-referential gesture in
music, requires less than narrative. This is possibly the reason why
musical description has occurred more frequently, at least in isolated
101
See also, with reference to the symphonic poem, Altenburg 1998: 157.
102
“[...] a means of giving a basis to the nobility of instrumental music, to the claim
that it is ‘culture’ and not [...] merely ‘pleasurable entertainment’.” [My translation]
103
An idea of the extent to which description has in fact been employed can be de-
rived from Klaus Schneider’s Lexikon Programmusik: Stoffe und Motive (1999), even
though not all of his collection of hetero-referential musical subjects and motives in
programme music is relevant to musical description in the sense used in the present
essay.
76 Werner Wolf
elements, throughout history104 than musical narrativity. It even con-

tinues to thrive in contemporary film music so that the descriptive in
music appears as a critical subject which will require further attention
both from a theoretical and a historical perspective.
4. Conclusion
To recapitulate and conclude: Description is obviously a notion that is

used in several contexts. In the context which is relevant to the pre-
sent volume, namely literature and other media, the descriptive is a
particular cognitive frame that is destined to vividly represent set-
tings, characters and other concrete objects with an emphasis on their
perceptual appearance, on their specific being, the attributes of their
So-Sein. As long as one remains within the scope of the concrete, this
emphasis, which is a product of transmission or ‘discourse’, is much
more important than the selection of the object represented. Descrip-
tiveness is thus largely a ‘discursive’ phenomenon – arguably more so
than narrativity. Therefore, also the ‘substance’ of all discursive trans-
mission, the medium, plays an especially important role in descrip-
tions.
As with narrativity, different media have different descriptive
potentials in realizing the frame ‘description’. The term ‘potential’
can in retrospect be seen to consist actually of two dimensions: the
scope of describable phenomena and specific areas of descriptive
strength or excellence. In both respects media vary, depending on the
signs predominantly employed by them, their representational facul-
ties and their mainly spatial or temporal nature. Consequently, the
recipient’s share in ‘reading’ the objects described also varies105.
104
For the history and pre-history of ‘programme music’ see Altenburg 1997: 1833-
1843, and Scruton 2001: 397-399; for the history and extension of the sub-genre of
the symphonic poem see in addition Macdonald 2001 and Altenburg 1998: 160-167.
It should, however, be noted that ‘programme music’ is not co-extensive with musical
description. Altenburg even goes so far as to claim that Tonmalerei – the most impor-
tant device of descriptive musical hetero-referentiality – is not a necessary part of pro-
gramme music (see 1997: 1827).
105
This variation, however, excludes a degree zero (since there is no perception with-
out the recipient’s cooperation) and 100% (for this would point to an absence or irrel-
evance of an artefact as a stimulus of description).
As for the scope, music is certainly most limited here, as it can

only vaguely describe some phenomena that all must have at least
some kind of relationship to aural impressions. Pictorial description is
also limited, albeit less so than music, as it can in principle embrace
the entire range of visual phenomena; in addition, it can at least refer
to non-visual phenomena by showing their visual results (e. g. wind
through the representation of an extinguished candle or a bad smell by
the grimace of a person) – although this is not exactly describing but
only indexically alluding to a phenomenon. Among the three media
discussed, fiction as a representative of the verbal media, owing to the
symbolic flexibility of its signs, certainly has the greatest range of
potential descriptive objects. Indeed, its scope is in principle unlim-
ited, as it can give detailed information on all sorts of describable ob-
jects. If in looking back we therefore want to assess the general de-
scriptive potential of the three media compared in terms of scope, that
is, regardless of their specific strengths in some fields, we ought per-
haps to rearrange the sequence and attribute the maximum of descrip-
tive capability not to the pictorial medium but to the verbal one106.
However, the superior position of the verbal medium in one de-
scriptive field does not entail that it equally excels in all others, too.
Thus, the undoubted representational faculty of the pictorial medium
with its static visual signifiers is best employed when depicting static
spatial objects. This is a field in which verbal literature cannot com-
pete with pictures. On the other hand, literature, a no less clearly rep-
resentational and hetero-referential albeit temporal medium, is better
able to describe processes and, of course, language itself. It is indeed
here (and this also applies to fiction as a literary sub-medium) that it
is at its best as to precision and potential reduction of areas of indeter-
minacy107. In these respective areas of descriptive excellence, the
recipient’s share will be smaller than in other areas. In contrast to this,
owing to its inherent difficulty concerning hetero-referential represen-
tation, instrumental music must resort to a maximum of recipients’
contribution even in its aural ‘home domain’ if it purports to be de-
106
This, of course, does not imply that, for instance, film – which has not been dis-
cussed in the present essay – owing to its combination of images, words, music and
sound, would not surpass an exclusively verbal medium in terms of descriptive scope.
107
One should, however, repeat that no medium is able to completely abolish such
areas of indeterminacy and that consequently medial comparison can only refer to de-
grees of indeterminacy.
78 Werner Wolf
scriptive at all. One must, however, repeat that this is not to deny a
basic, albeit restricted descriptive potential of music. Obviously, mu-
sic has a natural advantage when it comes to describing realities in
which acoustic phenomena predominate. It is here also that music can
achieve a degree of particularity that is denied to either fiction or the
pictorial medium, while the pictorial medium can obtain a descriptive
precision with reference to visual objects that cannot be paralleled by
either music or literature. An overview of the general descriptive po-
tential of the three media discussed is schematically presented in
Figure 2.
MEDIUM WRITTEN VERBAL PICTORIAL MEDIUM INSTRUMENTAL

MEDIUM (FICTION) (PAINTING) MUSIC
PREDOMINANT hetero-referential, hetero-referential, self-referential,
NATURE symbolic, dynamic iconic (visual), static iconic (aural),
OF SIGNS dynamic
GENERAL in principle limited extremely limited
DESCRIPTIVE unlimited
SCOPE
AREAS OF language, processes static, visual aural phenomena
RELATIVE phenomena
DESCRIPTIVE
EXCELLENCE
RECIPIENTS’ relatively low for relatively low for extremely high,
SHARE IN language and static, visual even with
DESCRIPTIONS processes; relatively phenomena; relatively reference to aural
high for all other high for all other phenomena
objects objects
Figure 2: Descriptive potentials of select media – overview
A major result of the foregoing reflections on descriptions was that

description is a transmedial phenomenon. In this quality it resembles
narrativity. One may even say that it surpasses narrativity in this re-
spect, for the transmedial scope of the frame ‘narrative’ is somewhat
limited owing to its higher structural demands. This is also why one
would perhaps be more hesitant to apply the frame ‘narrative’ to in-
strumental music, even to special kinds of instrumental music, than
the frame ‘description’. While there is no received instrumental genre
that would per se point to narrativity, descriptivity is for instance im-
plied in the very genre of the symphonic poem with its Tonmalerei108.
108
It is also revealing that there is no correspondent term ‘Tonerzählung’.
Generally, the transmedial quality of description is a challenge to

scholars that has hardly been answered in kind, that is, from an
interdisciplinary perspective. The present volume is one of the first
attempts to remedy this neglect. Although individual contributors will
focus on their ‘own’ media, the synopsis of the book as a whole will,
hopefully, reveal to what extent an inter- or at least multidisciplinary
approach to description is fruitful. The foregoing theoretical consider-
ations as well as the survey of some key media are meant to prepare
the ground for this larger enterprise for which the present volume is a
first exploration. May further expeditions in the fascinating interdisci-
plinary field of a transmedial perspective on description follow109.
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Description in Literature
and Related (Partly) Verbal Media
Towards a Typology, Poetics and History
of Description in Fiction
Ansgar Nünning
While the importance of the concept of description has been widely recognized
since the 1980s, the differences between various kinds of descriptions and the
changing historical functions they have fulfilled have generally been overlooked.
This paper addresses some of the theoretical and typological issues pertaining to
the concept of description, providing a typological classification of different kinds
of descriptions as well as an outline of the functions they can fulfil in fictional
narratives. The first two parts of the paper are devoted to the introduction and
definition of the notion of description and to the discussion of some of the
problems surrounding it. Section three develops a set of categories for the analysis
of, and typological distinction between, different kinds of descriptions. The fourth
section provides a brief historical overview of the functions that descriptions have
fulfilled in British novels from the end of the seventeenth century to the present.
The final section gives a brief summary and suggests that much more work needs
to be done.
1. Introducing descriptions and meta-descriptions
The neglect it has suffered from both critical theory and narratology
notwithstanding, description has been one of the constitutive elements
of the ‘rhetoric of fiction’ (sensu W. C. Booth) since the beginnings
of the novel. Moreover, descriptions are an integral component of
everyday narration as well as of anecdotes, urban legends, and a wide
range of literary genres. Many literary narrative texts feature a wide
range of different kinds of description, which have as yet not been
properly distinguished, mapped, and analyzed. Most readers are likely
to intuitively recognize and identify instances of description, ascrib-
ing their descriptive quality to features typically associated with the
text-type designated description: “an anonymous observer, almost no
verbs of action, predicates of state, present tense, a constructed simul-
taneity” (Ronen 1997: 274). Given the fact that one could produce an
endless list of quotations of descriptions, it is striking that narrative
theory has accorded only comparatively little attention to these
features of narratives, despite their ubiquity in novels, short stories,
92 Ansgar Nünning
and other kinds of narrative: in spite of its indulgence in theory and

terminology, narratology, with only relatively few laudable excep-
tions1, has not devoted much systematic attention to the forms and
functions of descriptions.
The three underlying theses of this essay – that we need a more
sophisticated and differentiated analytical framework if we want to
come to terms with descriptions, that we should distinguish between
different kinds of description, and that the forms and functions of
description should be historicized by a diachronically oriented narra-
tive theory – are actually confirmed by the few studies that are de-
voted to this topic: though many attempts have been made to define
the phenomenon of description, only few narratologists have tried to
distinguish between different kinds of description2. And though quite
a number of narrative theorists have become more concerned with
many aspects of, and issues involved in, descriptions since the 1980s,
there is still a surprising lack of studies examining the use of different
forms of description in the works of individual authors, in different
genres or in given periods of literary history. Some theorists have
mentioned in passing that “texts describe differently in different
poetic periods” (Ronen 1997: 275), but little sustained effort has been
made to consider such questions as which historical changes in the
use of descriptions can be observed and which functions descriptive
statements could fulfil in individual cases3.
This comparative neglect description has suffered is the starting
point of this essay, which will try to bridge the gap by staking out
three aims: First of all some theoretical issues involved in coming to
grips with description will be introduced and discussed (section 2).
Then some steps towards developing an analytical framework, a typo-
logy and a poetics of different kinds of description will be presented
(section 3), which can then serve as a basis for a survey of the chang-
ing functions of descriptions in English novels from the seventeenth
to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century (section 4). A short
1
Cf. Chatman (1990: 38-55), who has devoted one chapter (tellingly entitled “De-
scription Is No Textual Handmaiden”) to the phenomenon, as well as Fludernik’s
concise, but pioneering observations (Fludernik 1996: 150f., 293, 329, 348). See also
the titles listed in the bibliography below.
2
Cf. e. g. the typologies offered by Lodge (1977) and Bal (1981-1982).
3
For one of the few exceptions to this rule, cf. Ibsch (1982), who was one of the
first theorists to reflect on the functions of descriptions.
Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description in Fiction 93
summary and a brief look at some of the points that future research
might explore will complete this article (section 5).
2. Coming to terms with descriptions and the ways in which they

are naturalized
Although the term ‘description’ has been used in a great number of

studies, having become a common and widespread category of literary
studies as well as a household word of narrative theory, only few
narratologists have analyzed the subject in great detail4. There are
arguably two main reasons for this: Firstly, the term ‘description’ is
so widely used in English that it seems to be largely self-explanatory,
the more so because readers are believed to recognize descriptions
intuitively5. Secondly, narrative theory for a long time displayed a
strong normative bias towards narrative, regarding description as
merely ornamental and relegating it to the margins of scholarly en-
quiry.
Narratological research concerned with description has so far
focused on the distinction between narration and description, on some
key issues of the theory of description and on structural aspects of its
internal organization. In contrast, both the questions of different kinds
of description and of historical changes of the functions of description
in literary texts (cf. Ibsch 1982) have received scant attention. The
same holds true for the question of the role of the reader and the
frameworks he or she draws on when naturalizing a text. Though
quite a few narrative theorists are by now agreed that descriptive
statements can fulfil a variety of textual functions and that the reader
plays an important role in filling in the gaps, neither the functions nor
the role of the reader have been sufficiently explored. One of the main
reasons for the comparative neglect of these two issues is that most of
the scholarly work on description has focused on the intricate issue of
defining description and of gauging the complex relation that pertains
4
See the titles listed in the bibliography. For short definitions of the term, cf.
Prince (1987: 19), Nünning (1998/2004: 60), and Pflugmacher (2005: 101-102).
5
Cf. e. g. Hamon (1972: 465): “Le lecteur reconnaît et identifie sans hésiter une de-
scription.” Bal (1981-1982: 105): “We recognize them [descriptions] intuitively.”
94 Ansgar Nünning
between narrative and description6. Though some scholars have con-

vincingly argued that a “clear distinction between narration and de-
scription is, of course, untenable” (Cobley 1986: 397)7, many theo-
rists have been preoccupied by the attempt to establish such a clear-
cut borderline. Since I will therefore focus on other issues that have
hitherto been comparatively neglected, two quotations from the en-
tries in the two specialist encyclopaedias of narratology may suffice
to recall how the key term of this lecture is generally defined:
description. The representation of objects, beings, situations, or […] happenings
in their spatial rather than temporal existence, their topological rather than chron-
ological functioning, their simultaneity rather than succession. It is traditionally
distinguished from NARRATION and from COMMENTARY. (Prince 1987: 19)
Description is a *text-type which identifies the properties of places, objects, or
persons (see EXISTENTS). Classical narratology defines description as a narra-
tive pause interrupting the presentation of the chain of *events. (Pflugmacher
2005: 101)
Since Werner Wolf, in his contribution to this volume, not only deals
with the problems involved in defining description exhaustively, but
also clarifies a broad range of theoretical issues surrounding the con-
cept, it may suffice to briefly recapitulate some of the areas he covers.
As Wolf convincingly argues, though description may be a particu-
larly elusive phenomenon, it would be erroneous to assume that it
cannot be defined at all. Conceptualizing the descriptive as a cog-
nitive frame and locating it within a sophisticated typology of basic
semiotic macro- and micro-modes, genres and media, Wolf provides
us with the most wide-ranging discussion of the formal and functional
characteristics of it to date. Moreover, he also briefly explores the
intricate question of the concretization of descriptive objects in the
recipient’s mind (cf. above: chap. 2.7), emphasizing that media-
specific gaps as well as areas of indeterminacy must be taken into
account.
What is arguably at least as important as defining and locating
description, however, is dealing with other key issues of coming to
terms with this seemingly ‘natural’ and self-explanatory, yet curiously
complex and elusive theoretical concept. Wolf’s eminently helpful
6
See e. g. Genette (1969), Hamon (1972, 1982), Bal (1981-1982), and Mosher
(1991).
7
See e. g. Kittay (1981), Sternberg (1981), Mosher (1991), and Ronen (1997).
Only few theorists have gone so far as Ronen, however, who argues that “the opposi-
tion description-narrative […] should be given up” (ibid.: 284).
terminological distinctions and suggestions shall therefore be aug-

mented by a set of further questions and categories of analysis. First,
the role of the reader as well as that of the context, conventions, and
frameworks involved in naturalizing descriptions merits some
attention; second, the variety of forms in which description can occur
have to be taken into account; and third, the question of which func-
tions different forms of description can fulfil has to be addressed.
Though an exhaustive account of all the features that contribute to
the concretization of descriptive objects in the reader’s mind is an ex-
tensive task that is well beyond the scope of this essay, a brief outline
of the main factors involved in the process and of the most important
concepts that can illuminate it may at least be given. The insights pro-
vided by cognitive narratology and “psychonarratology” (Bortolussi/
Dixon 2003) can arguably throw more light on the ways in which
descriptions are naturalized in the reading process and in which tex-
tual data, conventions, cognitive frameworks and schemata interact. It
is worth recalling how the logic of description works. As theorists
such as Hamon (1972) and Chatman (1990: 24) have rightly empha-
sized, the logic and coherence of description are based on metonymy
and contiguity: “The metonymic structure may entail the relation of
objects to each other as they occur in the world or in the imagination,
but also the relation of objects to their own qualities” (Chatman 1990:
24). The description of a house, for instance, tends to presuppose or
entail the mentioning of its size, colour, and number of rooms as well
as such properties as doors, windows, rooms, etc. which constitute the
house. The principles of metonymy and contiguity enable readers or
listeners to infer and project the constitutive features that belong to a
described object even if these are not enumerated in a description.
In addition, conventions, frames, and “quasi-mimetic schemata”
(Sternberg 1981: 66) ensure that the reader’s world-knowledge will
fill many of the gaps that every description is bound to leave. It is the
“quasi-mimetic logic, anchored in reality-models and object-schema-
ta” (ibid.: 68), that enables the reader to infer and predict the presence
of certain descriptive elements from the explicit mention of others.
Michael Riffaterre has introduced a theoretically and heuristically
useful concept which enhances our understanding of the logic of de-
scription, viz. the notion of ‘descriptive systems’, which he defines as
follows:
[…] descriptive systems are more complex than the presupposition network, but
in their simpler form they are very close to the dictionary definition of their kernel
96 Ansgar Nünning
words. The descriptive system is a network of words associated with one another
around a kernel word, in accordance with the sememe of that nucleus. Each com-
ponent of the system functions as a metonym of the nucleus. So strong are these
relationships that any such metonym can serve as a metaphor for the ensemble,
and at any point in the text where the system is made implicit, the reader can fill
in gaps in an orderly way and reconstitute the whole representation from that
metonym in conformity with the grammar of the pertinent stereotypes. (Riffaterre
1978: 39-40)
Due to the metonymic logic of descriptive systems, descriptions of
places, persons, and objects inevitably cue readers to activate the
appropriate real-world contextual frames8. From the point of view of
the dynamics of the reading process, descriptions do not represent
givens but constructs, relying on a wide range of inferences by the
reader9. The way in which readers fill in gaps very much depends on
the coherence implied in, or provided by, frames, schemata, and other
prefabricated codes (e. g. clichés, commonplaces, stereotypes), i. e. on
cognitive “knowledge representations that store specific configura-
tions” (Herman 2002: 270) of, e. g., places, objects, or participants in
a given situation. These frames and knowledge representations not
only shape the ways in which readers actualize and concretize de-
scriptive objects in analogy to the respective real-life phenomena,
they also constrain the ways in which a description can be plausibly
naturalized. Evelyn Cobley has succinctly summarized what is in-
volved here:
On the most basic level […], the verbal description takes its organization first of
all from the ways in which objects are organized in the real world. This referential
motivation imposes an order on description that appears to be natural and
inevitable. […] description models itself on principles of coherence that have
already been organized by our culture. […] Every description thus appeals more
or less explicitly to orders of knowledge that organize our everyday world.
(Cobley 1986: 401-402)
In addition to these referential constraints, however, there are also
other codes and conventions which influence the selection of descrip-
tive elements, the overall coherence of a description, and the ways in
which readers fill in gaps and naturalize descriptions. One of these
8
For the notion of ‘contextual frames’, cf. Emmott (1997). For detailed investiga-
tions of naturalizing strategies, cf. Fludernik (1996), Herman (2002) and Bortolussi/
Dixon (2003).
9
Cf. Sternberg (1981: 73): “As such, action and description form not givens but
inferences, constructs”. Cf. also Herman (2002: 265f., 269f., 297f.) and Bortolussi/
Dixon (2003: 186-190).
conventions is “that of realism or verisimilitude” (Chatman 1990: 25).

Though these frames also depend on the referentiality of the text, i. e.
on the assumption that the text refers to, or is at least compatible with,
the so-called real world, they not only activate the reader’s general
world-knowledge but also his or her knowledge of literary conven-
tions. Therefore, another contextual framework relevant to the natu-
ralization of descriptions involves a number of specifically literary
frames of reference. These include, for example, general literary con-
ventions, conventions and models of literary genres, and stereotyped
models of ‘flat’ characters such as the picaro, the miles gloriosus, but
also elements from complex, ‘round’ characters (cf. Chatman 1990:
25f.). It is very important not to forget these specifically literary or
generic considerations if one wants to account for the ways in which
readers concretize or project descriptions in the reading process, the
more so because the use of description varies a great deal from one
genre to the other – an often neglected issue that we will return to
later.
Cognitive approaches to narrative can further illuminate the ways
in which readers construct mental models, i. e. the process of cogni-
tive mapping that assigns referents both a position in the storyworld
and certain properties (cf. Herman 2002). In their Psychonarratology,
Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon (2003) have developed three
useful categories that can throw more light on the internal logic of de-
scriptions, on the ways the latter are naturalized in the reading
process, and on the constraints involved therein: “These categories
are descriptive reference frames, positional constraints, and percep-
tual attributions” (ibid.: 186). Bortolussi and Dixon convincingly
argue that there “can be no description of anything that does not have
implications for spatial vantage point” (ibid.). Whenever a description
is rendered in a novel, there are various textual clues that indicate
spatial positioning. The notion of descriptive reference frames refers
to “a set of axes that determine how spatial and relational information
in a perceptual description is conveyed” (ibid.) and that enable the
reader to infer the “‘descriptive position’” (ibid.: 187) or location
from which the description presumably originates. They argue that
texts usually contain linguistic features that constrain the projection
of such a descriptive position: “Typically, perceptually salient de-
scriptions imply some constraint on the location of the agent who
might have perceived the information.” (Ibid.: 188) In the process of
naturalizing a description, readers tend to construct a mental represen-
98 Ansgar Nünning
tation of the scenario, including the object described, the perceiver

and his or her putative location or position in the scene. Representing
a rendering of perceptual information, descriptions project “percep-
tual knowledge that may also be attributed to characters in the story
world” (ibid.). Bortolussi and Dixon “refer to the cues that support
such inferences as perceptual attribution features.” (Ibid.)
In sum, from the perspective of cognitive narratology and psycho-
narratology, descriptions are anything but a neutral representation of
places, characters, and objects in a narrative that are primarily de-
termined by textual data. In addition to the information and stimuli
provided by the text itself, the reader also draws on extratextual
frames of reference in the attempt to construct mental representations
of the objects that are described. The naturalization of description
thus depends, for instance, on the cultural models, conceptual frame-
works and prior knowledge of literary conventions that readers bring
to the text and that they use to impose coherence and meaning on
descriptions. One can even go so far as to argue that description “only
reactivates the reader’s memory of something he or she already
knows, or it adds previously unknown information to an existing
stock of knowledge” (Cobley 1986: 398). The concepts of cognitive
mapping, contextual frames, descriptive systems, descriptive refer-
ence frames, positional constraints, and perceptual attributions can
provide more insight into the key elements involved in the naturaliza-
tion of descriptions.
Two examples from the class of ‘metadescription’, which will be
more fully explained later on, may serve to illustrate some of these
rather abstract considerations. Instead of providing a description him-
self, the narrator in P. G. Wodehouse’s comic novel Pigs Have Wings
merely refers the reader back to other descriptions of similar scenes,
thus cueing him or her to activate the appropriate frame. The authorial
narrator in J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello confines himself
to enumerating some stereotypical features of the main character’s
outward appearance, openly referring to them as “signs of moderate
realism”, and appeals to the reader or narratee to “supply the partic-
ulars”. He even goes so far as to mention the name of the author who
pioneered the narrative procedures known as “formal realism” (Watt
1957/1972: 34-35), thereby not only breaking the aesthetic illusion
but at the same time also laying bare the conventionality, artificiality
and contingency of description itself:
The reader will be able to picture the scene if he throws his mind back to de-
scriptions he has read of the sort of thing that used to go on in those salons of the
eighteenth century. (Wodehouse 1952/1957: 191)
The blue costume, the greasy hair, are details, signs of moderate realism. Supply
the particulars, allow the significations to emerge of themselves. A procedure
pioneered by Daniel Defoe. (Coetzee 2003/2004: 4)
As these two examples underscore, textual data and the reader’s
world-knowledge always interact in the reading process. A writer can
give a detailed view of a place, scene or character by listing as many
descriptive elements as s/he deems necessary or appropriate, a proce-
dure pioneered by Defoe and Richardson and brought to perfection by
the great tradition of realist novelists in the nineteenth century. But
s/he can just as well dispense with providing the particulars of the ob-
ject of description, relying on the internal logic of descriptive systems
and the reader’s memory and merely cueing the reader to activate the
appropriate contextual frames. By appealing to the reader to complete
the picture and work it out for him- or herself, novelists like
Wodehouse and Coetzee foreground both “the arbitrary process of se-
lection and arrangement which descriptions usually try to conceal”
(Cobley 1986: 400) and the processes involved in the reader’s con-
cretization of described objects and in the concomitant construction of
mental representations.
One can therefore posit a graded scale between the poles of
bottom-up, data-driven description on the one hand and top-down,
frame-driven descriptions on the other. The type designated as
bottom-up, data-driven description is characterized by a plenitude of
details and descriptive elements about the object in question. By con-
trast, top-down, frame-driven descriptions rely much more heavily on
the metonymic logic of descriptive systems and contextual frames,
merely cueing readers to activate the appropriate contextual frames by
providing only so much information about the phenomenon in ques-
tion as to enable readers to identify the respective real-life object.
Theories of description should therefore be reconceptualized in a cog-
nitive and pragmatic framework that takes into consideration both the
world-model and knowledge in the mind of the reader and the inter-
play between textual and extratextual information.
One of the main problems of most of the theories of, and research
on, description currently available is that they tend to be mostly con-
cerned with description in general, i. e. with “the text-type Descrip-
tion” (Chatman 1990: 30), rather than with the actual plethora of
100 Ansgar Nünning
different kinds and historical manifestations of the text-type and

narrative mode (cf. Bonheim 1982, 1990) usually subsumed under
this wide, arguably all-too-wide, umbrella term. The main reason for
this may be traced back to the preferences of structuralist narratology,
especially its interest in, and search for, general or even universal
rules of narrative, which has served to suppress interest in historical
differences (cf. Ronen 1997: 277). While many narrative theorists
have hazarded generalized observations on the structural properties of
description and the opposition between narration and description,
only very few have bothered to examine the actual multiplicity and
variety of different kinds of description. In one of the best articles on
the subject, Ronen (1997: 276), for instance, observes in passing “that
there is a whole range of ways to describe with very little ground in
common”, but neither she nor most other narrative theorists who have
written on the subject have outlined distinctions between different
types of descriptions or developed an analytical framework for
coming to terms with them.
There are, however, a few exceptions to the rule, most notably
Gerald Prince, Mieke Bal and José Manuel Lopes. Prince (1987: 19)
merely provides a more or less random and open list of various types
of description without making any attempt to systematize them or to
elaborate on the heterogeneous criteria: “A description can be more or
less detailed and precise; objective or subjective; typical and stylized
or, on the contrary, individualizing; decorative or explanatory/func-
tional”. Integrating earlier models by Hamon (1972), Lodge (1977)
and Maarten van Buuren, and developing them further, Bal (1981-
1982) somewhat more systematically differentiates between six types
of description, for which she has coined fairly self-explanatory terms,
viz. “The Referential, Encyclopedic Description”, “The Referential-
Rhetoric Description”, “Metaphoric Contiguity”, “The Systematized
Metaphor”, “The Contiguous Metaphor”, and “The Series of Meta-
phors” (Bal 1981-1982: 122-123). By contrast, in his pioneering
monograph Foregrounded Description in Prose Fiction, Lopes (1995)
outlines an analytical framework for investigating different kinds of
description, proposing a heuristically fruitful distinction between
three main levels of inquiry:
[…] a stylistic level, where description is analysed at a micro-sentence level; a
discursive level, where analysis focuses on the internal organization of larger de-
scriptive segments/blocks; and a functional level, where […] we can focus on the
functions description might fulfil in the context of a given work. (Lopes 1995: 20)
Though he readily admits that these “levels are bound to be closely

intertwined” (ibid.), he convincingly demonstrates how productive his
framework is as a theoretical and heuristic device.
Taking my cue, or indeed cues, from Prince, Bal and Lopes, as
well as from Fludernik, Ronen, and Wolf, I should like to suggest that
in order to come to terms with the variety of descriptions we encoun-
ter in literary narratives from different periods, what we need is an
even more refined framework of analytical categories which allows us
to distinguish between different kinds of descriptions. Instead of
being more or less identical or similar tokens of one prototype, the
forms and functions of descriptions arguably vary a lot across dif-
ferent genres and periods. In order to be able to distinguish different
forms of description, we need an analytical and terminological frame-
work, which I will try to outline in the next section.
3. An outline of an analytical framework: steps towards

a typology, poetics, and history of different forms
of description
The following distinctions between different forms of description are

based on a number of criteria mostly adapted from Wolf’s (1993: esp.
220-259) groundbreaking study Ästhetische Illusion und Illusions-
durchbrechung in der Erzählkunst, in which Wolf develops a typo-
logy of narrative self-referentiality which helps to differentiate be-
tween various types of metafiction and the potential effect of each.
Wolf’s typology is based on three parameters: the form of mediation,
contextual relation, and contents value (cf. ibid.: 230). The first cri-
terion, form of mediation, refers to the level of narration the speaker
engaged in metafictional reflections can be situated on. According to
the second criterion, contextual relation, different forms of meta-
fiction can be distinguished depending on whether they appear in a
central or marginal position within the text under discussion, on how
deeply they are interrelated with the narrated story, on whether they
appear only in singular instances or in clusters, and on how clearly the
metafictional aspects of the comment are marked. Using Wolf’s third
criterion, contents value, one can differentiate between various forms
of explicit metafiction, i. e. according to the questions whether meta-
fiction refers to the ‘fictio or the fictum status’ (cf. ibid.: 231) of a
passage (the medial nature of a text or its reference/non-reference to
102 Ansgar Nünning
reality), if it contains comments on the entire text or only on parts of

it, if the commentary is on the text itself, on literature in general, or
on another text, and if the discussion of the aesthetic subject takes a
rather critical view of it or not.
The detailed typology that Wolf (ibid.: 220-265.) develops on the
basis of these criteria does not only fill a gap in research on meta-
fiction but can also be applied to the field of description, provided
some modifications and additions are made. While Wolf is primarily
concerned with determining the potential destruction of aesthetic
illusion through various forms of explicit metafiction, the main aim of
the following considerations is to develop a set of descriptive, or
rather meta-descriptive, categories for analyzing descriptions in lite-
rary narratives as well as for differentiating between various types of
description. Out of the large range of criteria that might be relevant
for a typological differentiation of various types of description, it is
primarily the following which are particularly productive and rele-
vant.
Using Wolf’s criteria and Lopes’ fruitful distinction between dif-
ferent levels of analyses as starting points, one can distinguish be-
tween different kinds of description on at least five levels of inquiry:
(a) a communicative or discursive level, which focuses on the struc-
ture of narrative mediation; (b) a stylistic level, where descriptions are
analysed from a linguistic point of view; (c) a structural or syntag-
matic level, where analysis focuses on the internal organization of
descriptions and on their relations with non-descriptive parts of a
narrative; (d) a thematic and paradigmatic level; (e) a reception-
oriented and functional level. This allows us to distinguish between
dominantly formal, stylistic, structural, and content-related subcatego-
ries of description. These can then be augmented and differentiated by
reception-oriented and functional criteria.
1. In terms of form and narrative mediation, various narratological
types of description can be differentiated according to the commu-
nication level on which the descriptor10, i. e., the descriptive agent
or textual speaker who provides a given description, is situated.
Using the communication level of the speaker as a starting point,
the resulting difference is between dominantly diegetic and domi-
nantly extradiegetic forms of description. In the first case, the
description can be attributed to one of the characters of the
10
For the use of the technical term ‘descriptor’, cf. Wolf (2005: 19, 21).
narrated world; in the second, descriptive statements come from a

narrator who describes the setting, characters, or existents of the
storyworld from a higher vantage-point on the communication
level of narrative transmission. Theoretically, descriptions can also
be given on a hypo- and a metadiegetic level of communication.
Although characters on the intradiegetic communication level of
the story frequently describe other characters, places or objects, it
is particularly the extradiegetic level of discourse, which is of
central importance in the present context.
A second distinction, which is closely related to the first, is the
one between character-oriented and narratee-oriented types of
descriptions. The question here is whether one of the characters on
the diegetic level of the story is the addressee of a description or
whether it is primarily addressed to the narratee, i. e. the narrator’s
counterpart on the extradiegetic level of communication. Though
every description is, of course, ultimately directed at the real
reader, it does make a difference whether and which characters are
aware of the information provided by a given description.
A third formal criterion which can serve to distinguish between
different narratological types of description is the question of
whether descriptions emanate from a heterodiegetic, covert nar-
rator situated outside of the level of the characters or whether they
are focalized from the point of view of one of the characters whose
sense perceptions they represent. On the basis of this criterion one
can posit a distinction between externally and internally focalized
types of descriptions. Whereas the former is typically associated
with conveying potentially objective or at least reliable informa-
tion about the existents and facts of the fictional world, the latter
kind of description, which becomes predominant in the Victorian
fin de siècle and the modernist novel, tends to be much more
tinged with a subjective bias and potential unreliability. The main
reason for this is that what internally focalized descriptions repre-
sent are not factually objective pieces of information about the
textual actual world, but rather the character-focalizer’s subjective
perceptions and impressions, i. e. something occurring in his or her
consciousness or mind. In order to determine whether a given
description is externally or internally focalized, the reader needs to
gauge whether it is possible and plausible to anchor the described
object as well as the order in which the descriptive elements are
rendered in some character’s or observer’s point of view (cf.
104 Ansgar Nünning
Sternberg 1981: 85). The representations provided via internally

focalized descriptions often tend to “reflect little more than the
fallibility and fantasies of the mediating perspective” (ibid.: 86). A
similar effect to that resulting from descriptions from the point of
view of an unreliable focalizer or ‘flawed filter’ is achieved when
unreliable narrators provide descriptions.
Fourthly, and closely related to the two previous criteria, mono-
perspective forms of description can and should be distinguished
from multi-perspective descriptions. Lopes (1995: 22) explains
what is involved here:
Generally speaking, nineteenth-century descriptions are constructed as mono-
perspective, cohesive, and coherent blocks that contribute, at times, to an
effect of visualization.
By contrast, like many instances of internally focalized descrip-
tions or descriptions given by an unreliable narrator, the kind des-
ignated as multi-perspective also serves to redirect the reader’s
attention from the objects and facts of the story to the problems of
observation, representation, mediation and narration. Even if nar-
rators do not explicitly thematize the process of description and
narration, which they can do in different ways, intensity, and de-
tail, they can still foreground problems of description by resorting
to multi-perspective descriptions. This is usually particularly effec-
tive when the perspectives offered on a given character, place or
object fail to add up to a coherent image or representation: “This
usually occurs whenever, in a descriptive block, the ‘descriptive
voice’ opts for conveying a multiplicity of visual perspectives of
the same object(s)” (Lopes 1995: 22).
2. On a second level of inquiry one can distinguish types of descrip-
tion on the basis of linguistic and stylistic criteria11. First, ex-
plicit types of description have to be distinguished from implicit or
implied forms, a distinction for which the linguistic mode of
mediation can serve as a criterion. Chatman (1990: 28) argues that
we can distinguish
at least three ways in which Description may be rendered by a text’s surface:
(1) Assertions […]. (2) Nonassertive mentions or inclusions […]. (3) Ellip-
tical implications.
11
For a discussion of some aspects on the stylistic level, cf. Lopes (1995: 20-22),
who gives a brief overview of the aspects that can be analyzed on this level and to
whom I am indebted for the distinction between the stylistic, discursive and functional
levels of inquiry.
Whereas direct assertions are characteristic of the explicit type of

description, implicit varieties tend to be non-assertive, relying
rather on implications or inferences that the reader has to draw on
the basis of his world-knowledge.
A second linguistic, or rather stylistic, criterion for differentia-
tion is the linguistic form in which descriptions are realized. Ac-
cording to this criterion, metaphoric and non-metaphoric forms of
description can be distinguished12. Classical examples of meta-
phoric descriptions of characters are the great many instances of
animal imagery that English novelists from Dickens to P. G.
Wodehouse are so famous for. In non-metaphoric description, con-
versely, characters, places and objects are referred to directly and
literally.
3. In addition to the discursive and linguistic types of description dis-
cussed so far, yet other kinds can be distinguished on a third level
of inquiry, i. e. a structural or syntagmatic level. In order to differ-
entiate between various types of description, structural criteria
referring to the relation between the descriptive passages of a
novel and its other parts have to be considered13. In this context,
the position, frequency, and structural integration of descriptive
segments are relevant. Structurally determined types of description
can on the one hand be distinguished according to the quantitative
relations of the descriptive and the non-descriptive parts. On the
other hand, qualitative criteria like the syntagmatic and semantic
integration of descriptions in the narrated story can serve as crite-
ria for a further typological differentiation and meta-description of
the various forms of description.
Therefore, the first question to be asked concerning structural
forms of description is in which position descriptions appear in a
novel. With the help of this criterion marginal forms of description
can be differentiated from central ones. Marginal varieties include
those which are located at the beginning or at the end of a text, a
form which has been common since the beginnings of the novel in
the Renaissance. Conversely, descriptions located in more central
12
For a detailed analysis of this issue, cf. Bal (1982).
13
Cf. Wolf (1993: 239-247), who refers to these structurally defined forms as ‘con-
textually determined types of explicit metafiction’ and who differentiates between
various types of metafictional comments, which will be adapted and modified in the
following.
106 Ansgar Nünning
positions can be found within an ongoing story. Examples of

works in which descriptions occur primarily in marginal positions
are most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English novels, e. g.
Aphra Behn’s and Daniel Defoe’s. From the nineteenth-century
realist novel onwards, description is also used repeatedly and more
frequently in more central positions throughout the narrative. The
descriptive dimension thus plays a much greater role in the nine-
teenth-century realist novel on account of the central position of
the descriptions, an effect that is enhanced by the following fea-
tures.
Secondly, block descriptions can be distinguished from dis-
tributed descriptions. The underlying criterion here is whether de-
scriptive information is given in one piece or rather disseminated
throughout a narrative text. Whereas block descriptions were the
dominant mode of introducing characters and places in the eigh-
teenth- and nineteenth-century novel, such “set pieces of descrip-
tion went out of fashion with the Modernist novel” (Chatman
1990: 26). As Wolf (in his contribution to this volume: 54) points
out, up to the nineteenth century it was standard practice “that
main characters received an en-bloc description by the narrator at
their first appearance in the storyworld”. Later on, as a result of
modernist novelists’ preference for internally focalized descrip-
tions, descriptive segments tend to be distributed throughout the
text (cf. Mosher 1991: 436).
Third, the quantitative criteria of frequency of descriptions and
of their extent compared to the narrative proper can help to distin-
guish between novels in which description only occurs rarely and
in points, and those which feature frequent and extensive forms of
description. Whereas ‘frequency’ refers to the number and regular-
ity of descriptive passages in a given novel, ‘extent’ refers to the
question of how long they are and what amount of space descrip-
tions tend to occupy. Although both criteria can be differentiated
in theory, they tend to be intrinsically connected in practice. This
is mainly due to the fact that increasing frequency and increasing
extent or length result in a higher degree of importance of the
descriptive dimension. Novels in which a limited number of de-
scriptions can only be found sporadically include most seven-
teenth- and eighteenth-century novels, especially e. g. the pica-
resque novel, which focus on the plot and the adventures of the
protagonist. From the end of the eighteenth century onwards, how-
ever, descriptions occur much more frequently and extensively, not

only in nineteenth-century realist novels and works belonging to
the naturalist school (e. g. Gissing’s novels) but also in Gothic
novels and historical novels, all of which can be considered as
typical examples of extensive and marked forms of description.
However, their functions may differ significantly, an issue to
which we will return later.
It may be mentioned in passing that the criteria of frequency
and extent of descriptions also serve to highlight the significant
differences in these respects between various narrative genres. In
contrast to other genres and media, in novels description never in-
forms an entire work, not even in the French nouveau roman,
though the frequency and length of descriptions can vary a great
deal. According to different degrees of frequency, intensity and
extent of description, narrative genres could be graded on a scale
in which the poles represent e. g. the fairytale and the nouveau
roman. As Max Lüthi (1984/1987: 20) has shown in his seminal
book, “the compulsion to describe is alien to” the fairy tale;
beauty, for instance, “is almost never made specific”. The overall
effect is therefore one of a lack of specificity and a comparatively
low degree of individualization. In the case of the nouveau roman,
on the other hand, descriptions are so frequent and extensive that
they virtually seem to inform almost the entire novel. And yet, as
theorists like Sternberg (1981) and Lopes (1995) have rightly
pointed out, the nouveau roman also challenges the traditional dis-
tinction between narration and description. Other genres in which
description tends to figure prominently, often being the overriding
text-type, include industrial and social novels, travelogues, travel
guides and lyric poems14.
A fourth structural criterion to differentiate between various
structurally defined types of description is the degree of structural,
as well as semantic, integration or isolation of the descriptive seg-
ments vis-à-vis the narrated story. In the case of integrated forms
of description, there is a close syntagmatic connection between the
descriptive passages of a text and its other parts, whereas isolated
forms are characterized by a clear-cut division between descriptive
and non-descriptive passages. Any number of typical examples of
the non-integrated type can be found in the kind of “identifiable
14
Cf. e. g. Sternberg (1981: 73) and Chatman (1990: 23).
108 Ansgar Nünning
textual blocks” (Lopes 1995: 22) providing descriptions of char-

acters and settings that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century realist
novels abound in. In contradistinction to this clear separation of
actual plot and description, the extensive descriptions one encoun-
ters in modernist novels tend to be “disseminated throughout the
text” (ibid.) and inextricably bound up with the discourse as well
as with the story.
Closely linked to the question of the degree of syntagmatic con-
nection is a fifth structural criterion, i. e. the degree of contextual
plausibility to which descriptions can be linked up with, or derived
from, the narrated story. By means of this criterion, motivated or
functional and unmotivated forms of description can be distin-
guished. While in the case of motivated description, the action or
the discourse itself provide a plausible reason for the fact that a
descriptive segment is introduced, the concept of largely unmoti-
vated forms of description applies when characters or narrators
give descriptions without any obvious connection between the
latter and the events of the story. Descriptions tend to be appar-
ently realistically (e. g. psychologically) motivated mainly in those
novels in which they are either focalized through one of the
characters or closely tied up with the experiences made by the
narrator – for example in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925)
or Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989), respectively.
In contrast to these examples, there are cases of predominantly un-
motivated and isolated descriptions in which the reader needs to
establish the connection between these segments and the narrated
story him- or herself. A case in point are many of the authorial
narrator’s intrusions in novels like John Fowles’ The French
Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) and John Berger’s G. (1972), in which
the heterodiegetic narrators repeatedly break the primary illusion
of characters and events by providing descriptions as well as meta-
fictional and metanarrative comments.
Concerning the differentiation between motivated and unmoti-
vated forms of description, there are general differences between
both homo- and heterodiegetic narration, and internally and exter-
nally focalized types of description as well. Since a homodiegetic
narrator by definition tells a story in which she or he plays a (more
or less) central role, the descriptive expressions can always be set
in relation to the narrated character due to the identity between the
narrating I and the experiencing I in homodiegetic narration.
Therefore, not only is the narrative process of a first-person narra-

tor a part of the fictitious world of the characters, but his/her
narration as well as his/her descriptions tend to be more or less
clearly motivated in the story world. The same holds true for
internally focalized descriptions. Heterodiegetic narrators, in con-
trast, report the fictitious story from an outsider’s perspective.
Since the direct connection to the story level is missing here, de-
scriptions given by heterodiegetic narrators and external focalizers
tend to be less strongly motivated than those of first-person nar-
rators and character focalizers.
4. Formal, stylistic and structural differentiations can be supple-
mented by content-related forms of description: here, the crite-
rion for differentiation is the object to which the description refers.
The wide variations of content may help determine the different
possibilities of functionalizing descriptions in a given novel. As
the preceding discussion has hopefully served to show, Wolf’s
criteria for a taxonomic classification of explicit metafiction also
provide useful clues for a systematization of different kinds or
types of description. But to do justice to the particular contents of
descriptive segments, other categories concerning the objects of
description and related problems have to be included as well.
Depending on the subject area and on the selection of the ob-
jects that are typically described in fiction, various content-related
forms of description can be distinguished. It is obvious, however,
that in terms of possible referents of descriptions, the possibilities
of differentiation are almost endless. Therefore, this area resists
systematization and classification, not least because all aspects or
existents of the storyworld can potentially become the object of a
description. These include not only places, characters and objects,
but also dreams, projects, ideas, as well as other phenomena be-
longing to the internal world of consciousness and the imagination.
Identifying typical objects of description, Wolf, in his contribution
to this volume (see 25), points out that descriptions tend to focus
on concrete, static, and spatial phenomena, e. g. places, characters,
physiognomies, and objects, rather than on abstract notions, feel-
ings, or bodily sensations, though the latter cannot be excluded
from the possible objects of description.
First, content-related types of description can be distinguished
according to the scope of the descriptive references and details,
ranging from selective to comprehensive description. Crucial
110 Ansgar Nünning
points here are the thematic breadth of references and the question
of in how detailed a manner the respective objects are described.
Selective types are characterized by their limitation to one or just a
few significant details. In contrast to this, comprehensive or
detailed descriptions attempt to identify and enumerate the largest
possible spectrum of properties of the place, object or character to
be described.
A second content-related criterion is the question of which
level or aspect of a narrative descriptions refer to. In this context,
one can differentiate between story-oriented and discourse-ori-
ented description. In the case of the story-oriented variety, descrip-
tions focus on phenomena of the narrated story. Conversely,
discourse-oriented description can be found in those comments
which refer to phenomena on the level of narrative transmission,
including descriptions of the narrator, the narratee, and aspects of
the narrative process. On the basis of this criterion, one can distin-
guish between speaker-oriented or expressive types of description,
and reader-oriented or appellative varieties. Whereas in the case of
expressive forms (which can be found aplenty in Henry Fielding’s
novels) such self-reflexive comments refer primarily to the nar-
rator, phatic and appellative varieties focus on keeping the appella-
tive channel up or on addressing or describing the narratee, respec-
tively. Countless examples of reader-oriented or appellative forms
of description can be found in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
(1759-67) and Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper (1936).
Third, another content-related distinction can be made between
intratextual and intertextual or intermedial description, depending
on whether a descriptive remark refers to other elements of the
same text or to other texts. Though descriptions typically refer to
phenomena of the text in which they occur, there is no need why
this should be so. As the plethora of examples of ekphrasis, for
instance, serves to illustrate, they can just as well describe objects
that do not play a central role in the novel of which they are a part.
A fourth content-related distinction can be made on the basis of
varying degrees of self-reflexivity with which descriptions are
given. This can serve to distinguish between unselfconscious and
self-reflexive forms of description. Although descriptions gener-
ally tend to result in momentary digressions from the narrated
story, both the degree of digression and the degree of self-
consciousness with which the latter is thematized or foregrounded
can vary considerably. In contrast to the widespread equation of

description with neutral or even objective representation, what
needs to be emphasized is that this is, of course, merely a con-
vention. Lanser (1981: 176) uses the category “narrative self-
consciousness” in the sense of narrative self-reflexivity or descrip-
tion: “We can posit a succeeding continuum of diminishing self-
consciousness of the narrative act.” (Ibid.: 177) According to the
model she puts forward, different levels of intensity of narrative,
and, one might add, self-reflexivity, with regards to description
can be graded on a scale in which the poles represent a well-
defined level of “narrative self-consciousness” and “narrative un-
consciousness” (which she defines as “narrators who show not the
slightest awareness of a narratee or a communicative context”;
ibid.), respectively.
If description itself becomes the subject of a self-reflexive
metanarrative comment, and is thus laid bare as a device, one can
speak of foregrounded description or ‘meta-description’. Typical
examples of this would be the highly self-reflexive passages from
the novels by P. G. Wodehouse and J. M. Coetzee quoted in the
first section of this essay. Although there are several precursors for
this phenomenon, even in the nineteenth-century realist novel, it is
such genres as the comic novel and postmodernist metafiction in
which one typically encounters such meta-descriptions. The kind
of meta-description that occurs frequently in twentieth-century
novels foregrounds reflections about the arbitrariness and con-
tingency of any description.
The fifth content-related criterion focuses on the descriptor’s
assessment of his/her own descriptive competence, resulting in the
differentiation between affirmative and undermining description, i.
e. between those forms of description which express the narrator’s
confidence, and those forms in which the narrator’s insecurity and
self-doubt concerning the act of description become obvious, with
many gradual stages in between15. The descriptions provided by
authorial narrators in eighteenth-century and most Victorian nov-
els are prototypes of the affirmative type of description, whereas
15
As far as I know, this criterion was introduced by Lanser (1981: 178), who refers
to this scale as the “axis of self-confidence”, with “confidence” and “uncertainty” as
its poles.
112 Ansgar Nünning
the narrator’s belief in his/her own descriptive as well as narrative

competence has declined in many twentieth-century novels.
One early typical example of an incompetent narrator is the
servant Gabriel Betteredge in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone
(1868). Despite many attempts, he never really succeeds in telling
a coherent story, and he openly admits his narrative and descrip-
tive incompetence. A particularly extreme example of undermining
description can be found in Patrick McGrath’s neogothic novel
The Grotesque, in which the psychopathic first-person narrator
utters his doubts about his ability to portray events and existents in
a precise, coherent, and objective manner in one of his many self-
reflexive, meta-narrative as well as meta-descriptive, comments
about his rather limited descriptive and narrative competence:
So I [...] try to construct for you as full and coherent an account as I can of
how things got this way. You must forgive me if I appear at times to contra-
dict myself, or in other ways violate the natural order of the events I am dis-
closing; this business of selecting and organizing one’s memories so as to de-
scribe precisely what happened is a delicate, perilous undertaking, and I’m
beginning to wonder whether it may not be beyond me. (McGrath 1990: 114)
This distinction between affirmative and undermining description
thus concerns the question of whether and how a descriptor assess-
es the quality of his descriptions. Affirmative kinds of description
tend to be non-critical in that they represent descriptive statements
in which no evaluation is expressed, reflecting the narrator’s posi-
tive attitude to his/her own description as well as to convention-
alized forms of description in general. In contrast to this, critical
types of description are characterized by a narrator who distances
himself/herself from prevalent conventions or treats them with
irony. This is repeatedly the case in B. S. Johnson’s novels, for
instance, as becomes obvious in the narrator’s ironic criticism of
stereotypical portrayals of characters. The following quotation
from B. S. Johnson’s experimental novel Christie Malry’s Own
Double Entry (1973), which can stand for many other examples,
reflects the narrator’s critical and sceptical attitude to the
conventions of realism:
An attempt should be made to characterise Christie’s appearance. I do so with
diffidence, in the knowledge that such physical descriptions are rarely of value
in a novel. It is one of the limitations; and there are so many others. Many
readers, I should not be surprised to learn if appropriate evidence were
capable of being researched, do not read such descriptions at all, but skip to
the next dialogue or more readily assimilable section. (Johnson 1984: 51)
5. Apart from the formal, stylistic, structural, and content-related cri-

teria, a fifth group of reception-oriented, or functionally deter-
mined, forms of description has to be taken into consideration.
Here, the main criteria are the potential effects and functions of
descriptive segments. It is generally assumed that an accumulation
of descriptions contributes considerably to the creation of the
aesthetic illusion, to what Roland Barthes (1968/1982) felicitously
christened the ‘reality effect’ (l’effet de réel). Descriptions are in-
deed admirably suited to create a strong illusion of reality, to
provide readers with detailed information, and to authenticate the
storyworld (cf. Cobley 1986: 396; Lopes 1995: 11).
From the point of view of reader-response criticism, one can
first of all distinguish between descriptions which seem to be
transparent and easy to naturalize and those that are not. The latter
might be termed opaque descriptions. Whereas transparent de-
scriptions pose no difficulty for the reader who tries to concretize
the phenomenon that is described, opaque descriptions are much
more difficult for the recipient to naturalize. In the context of
frame theory, the mechanism by the help of which readers actual-
ize and concretize objects that are described in novels can be
understood as a set of interpretive strategies or a cognitive process
of the sort that has come to be known as ‘naturalization’ (cf.
Fludernik 1996), which makes textual phenomena intelligible in
terms of culturally accepted frames.
Second, the most important question to be asked from a reader-
oriented and functional perspective is whether descriptions serve
to underscore the aesthetic illusion and the reality effect, serving
as an authenticating device, or whether they undermine them. Most
forms of description serve to create coherence and to support the
illusion of authenticity or verisimilitude of the narrated story with-
out impairing the primary illusion referring to the storyworld. This
is particularly the case in the detailed story-oriented forms of de-
scription found in many seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century novels, in which descriptions often serve as a prominent
authenticating strategy. Since the 1970s, however, descriptions and
metadescriptions often tend to be used as a metafictional means of
destroying the aesthetic illusion.
Third, as far as their possible functions are concerned, decora-
tive descriptions can be distinguished from explanatory descrip-
114 Ansgar Nünning
tion16. Whereas the former type is merely ornamental, the latter

type of description fulfils some recognizable function within the
narrative. Prince (1987: 19) throws some light on what these
functions might be:
[...] establishing the tone or mood of a passage, conveying plot-relevant
information, contributing to characterization, introducing or reinforcing a
theme, symbolizing a conflict to come.
Though one should beware to assume that descriptions are gener-
ally merely an ornamental device, it would be equally misleading
to posit such a wide range of functions for every description.
The criteria developed here are not primarily useful for classifying
novels, chapters or parts of them according to various subforms of de-
scription. Rather, they are intended to provide an elaborated analytical
framework for a precise metatextual description of the poetics of
different types of descriptions. The following matrix summarizes the
most important types of description, providing an overview of the
criteria for differentiation on which the preceding classification is
based.
Types or kinds of description Criteria for determining

these types
I. Formal, discursive and narrato- Communication level and mode of
logical types of description narrative mediation
1. diegetic vs. extradiegetic description textual level on which the descriptor is
vs. situated, i. e. mediation situated on the
hypodiegetic vs. metadiegetic level of story, on the level of discourse/
description narrative transmission, or on further
framing or embedded levels
2. character-oriented vs. narratee- addressee of a description
oriented descriptions
3. externally focalized vs. internally kind of focalization through which de-
focalized description scriptive information is conveyed
4. mono-perspective vs. multi- perspectival mode of description;
perspective description number of focalizers and perspectives
16
Cf. Genette (1966: 156-157), who distinguishes between ‘ornamental description’
and ‘significative description’.
II. Linguistic and stylistic types Linguistic and stylistic form with
of description which a description is rendered
5. explicit vs. implicit description degree of linguistic explicitness
6. metaphoric vs. non-metaphoric stylistic form in which description is
description realized
III. Structural types of description Quantitative and qualitative relation-
ship of descriptive and non-descriptive
parts of the text and syntagmatic inte-
gration of descriptions in the narrated
story
7. marginal vs. central description position of the descriptive segment in a
novel
8. set/block vs. distributed description concentration/dissemination of descrip-
tive segments
9. brief vs. extensive description frequency and extent of descriptions
compared to the narrated story
10. integrated vs. isolated description degree of integration of a given descrip-
tion in, or isolation from, the narrated
story
11. motivated vs. unmotivated degree to which the action or the dis-
description course itself provide a plausible reason
for the description
IV. Content-related types of The ‘object’ of descriptive segments
description
12. selective vs. comprehensive scope of descriptive references and de-
description tails
13. story-oriented vs. discourse-oriented level and aspect of a narrative that de-
description as well as expressive and scriptions dominantly refer to
appellative kinds of description
14. intratextual vs. intertextual or the question if descriptive expressions
intermedial description characterize a narrative as belonging to a
genre or text type
15. unselfconscious vs. degree and extent of self-reflexivity with
self-reflexive/foregrounded meta- which a description is given
description
16. affirmative vs. undermining descriptor’s assessment of his/her de-
description scriptive competence and self-confi-
dence
116 Ansgar Nünning
V. Reception-oriented and function- The potential effect and function of de-

ally determined types of descrip- scriptive utterances
tion
17. transparent descriptions vs. opaque degree of difficulty a description poses
descriptions for the reader’s attempt to naturalize it
18. descriptions compatible with the the degree of compatibility with the
aesthetic illusion vs. (meta-)descrip- aesthetic illusion or anti-illusionism of a
tions disturbing illusion descriptive utterance
19. decorative/ornamental description the degree of functionalization of a de-
vs. explanatory/functional descrip- scription
tion
Figure 1: Types of Description
Despite its schematic and selective character, this overview may

suffice to show that there are a great number of different forms of
description which narrative theory has thus far failed to identify or
differentiate.
4. On the historically variable functions of description

in the English novel: a diachronic overview
The typology and poetics of description proffered here also provide a

number of precise reference points which can be employed to answer
the question of which functions certain forms of description may
fulfil. Since the phenomenon of description has thus far mainly been
discussed from a synchronic and theoretical vantage point, the follow-
ing section will give at least a very brief outline of the historic varia-
bility and polyfunctionality of descriptions. I should like to stress at
the outset, however, that different forms of description can, in fact,
fulfil a broad spectrum of functions17. It goes without saying that a
comprehensive reconstruction of the diachronic changes in the forms
and functions of description will have to remain a desideratum for a
longer study, for which the following can only offer some elements.
Apart from the widespread and misleading equation of description
17
Generally, one can assume that claims about the potential effects and functions of
narrative strategies are only hypotheses projected by the reader; cf. the seminal con-
tribution by Sommer (2000); on the functions of literature see also Gymnich/
Nünning, eds. (2005).
with the enhancement of the aesthetic illusion, there have been hardly
any studies concerning the functions of descriptions.
Before the most important changes in the uses of description in the
English novel are sketched from the vantage point of their historically
variable functions18, let us briefly look at those functions that have
been identified as being typical of descriptions. According to Wolf
(see his contribution to this volume: 15), the descriptive serves three
main functions in everyday discourse: first, it refers to a phenomenon,
permitting its identification through the attribution of certain quali-
ties; second, it provides a representation that permits others to imag-
ine or re-experience this phenomenon; third, it serves to provide facts
about this phenomenon rather than interpretations. Wolf also observes
that while the first two functions, i. e. identification and representa-
tion, are as relevant to aesthetic descriptions in literature as to every-
day communication, the question of whether descriptions in literature
also provide more or less objective facts about the fictional world
rather than interpretations thereof is a lot more intricate. Whereas the
majority of theorists have either not been much concerned with this
issue or argued that descriptions are mainly a means of providing
information about the existents of the storyworld, implicitly conceptu-
alizing description “as narrative’s neat meaning-less opposite” (Ronen
1997: 280), Michael Riffaterre (1981: 125) holds a much more radical
position, arguing that the primary purpose of a description “is not to
offer a representation, but to dictate an interpretation”. Rather than
opting for one of these positions or coming up with another such
generalizing observation, it might be more fruitful to explore the
various functions that different kinds of description can fulfil.
In addition to the basic functions discussed by Wolf, narrative
theorists have also assigned several other functions to descriptions in
literature. These include, for instance, “characterization, prediction
[…], delay, development of theme […], parody […] and even self-
contradiction” (Mosher 1991: 425). Description typically “situates
characters and action in real surroundings […] and also creates an
atmosphere” (ibid.: 427) that often prepares the reader for a key
theme. In addition to providing background information and atmos-
18
It is obvious that the scope of possible functions is not limited to those mentioned
here. For instance, descriptions can serve as a signal of narratorial unreliability (cf. A.
Nünning et al. 1998), particularly in the case of undermining description (e. g. the
example of McGrath’s The Grotesque referred to above).
118 Ansgar Nünning
phere, descriptions can serve as a means of “characterization, delay

for suspense, foreshadowing, and thematic information” (ibid.: 443).
Though, there is widespread agreement that descriptions tend to fulfil
several functions at once, one can assume that one of these function
may be predominant in any given case.
In Elizabethan prose and other precursors of the seventeenth-cen-
tury novel, descriptions tend to be realistically motivated, of limited
number, and relatively isolated. Mostly, they serve as a means of
providing expository information and as authenticating strategies. In
Renaissance prose – e. g. in Thomas Deloney’s short novels Jack of
Newberie (1597) and Thomas of Reading (1600) or in Thomas
Nashe’s picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of
Jake Wilton (1594) – description can be found only rarely and in
marginal positions without any descriptions that extend over long
passages: “the picaresque novel tended to downplay extensive de-
scription, since its major concern lay in the plot-directed development
of the action” (Fludernik 1996: 150).
In most late seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century novels, a
larger number of descriptions than in Renaissance prose occurs, but
prior to Sterne these do not serve primarily as a means of destroying
the aesthetic illusion, but have completely different functions. Inde-
pendent of the question of whether it is a first-person or an authorial
narrator who gives descriptions, the kind of descriptions that are
typical of the novels of this period are usually conducive to the con-
struction and maintenance of the aesthetic illusion, both as far as the
characters and the places and objects are concerned. In novels written
by, say, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson, right
through to Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, descriptions function as
authenticating strategies, which are intended to underline the suppos-
edly documentary character of the narrations, as any number of ex-
amples from novels of that period will illustrate. In addition, the nar-
rator’s and characters’ descriptions are often aimed at having a moral
or didactic effect. The quantitative and qualitative importance of de-
scription in the novels of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson, as
well as in those of many of their immediate imitators, and the spec-
trum of functions the various kinds of descriptions fulfil is much
greater than in any previous works in English narrative literature. As
Anne Patricia Williams (1996) has shown, description and tableau
play a particularly prominent role in the eighteenth-century British
sentimental novel, which, in contrast to the picaresque novel and the
adventure novel, downplays the plot-directed development of the

action.
Beginning with Laurence Sterne and then in Romantic narrative
prose, a basic change took place concerning the importance and the
functions of description, which, from the late eighteenth century on-
wards, began to play a more central role, developing in the direction
of metafiction and self-reflexivity. In Sterne’s novel The Life and
Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman the illusion of a personal-
ized narrator or ‘teller’ is intensified by the clear temporal and local
deictic situatedness of the act of narration and by the narrator’s
repeated self-reflexive thematization of it. Moreover, in Sterne’s
novel, there are several chapters which are primarily or even com-
pletely descriptive. Some chapters are even devoted to a description
of the omnipresent digressions, which are so central that they become
the subject of descriptive or metanarrative reflections. Although it is
not the narrator but a fictive editor who is the subject of the extended
descriptions in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-1834), there
are similarities between Sterne’s and Carlyle’s novels from a func-
tional point of view: in both cases, the descriptive segments not only
promote ‘an extradiegetic secondary illusion of a close proximity of
narrator/editor’ (cf. Wolf 1993: 570), they also fulfil similar paro-
distic and metafictional functions. In addition, they serve as a medium
for poetological and aesthetic self-reflection, and they underline the
literary staging of subjectivity in both works.
In realistic nineteenth-century novels, descriptions fully come into
their own, as it were, fulfilling again quite different functions:
strengthening ‘the complicity of the persons of the outer communi-
cation level’ (cf. ibid.: 463), they primarily serve to create a trust-
inducing conversation between the explicit narrator and the narratee,
establishing their agreement about basic norms and values. This
function is especially apparent in George Eliot’s early novels Scenes
of Clerical Life (1857) and Adam Bede (1859), in which both the
authorial narrator and the narratee function as observers of the charac-
ters19. Eliot’s humanistic and aesthetic concern to endear simple, ordi-
nary individuals to the reader and to ask the reader for his/her sympa-
19
Cf. Carlisle (1981: 181): “The narrator does not announce his understanding of a
character; he introduces himself to the reader, creates a bond between himself and his
listener, and only then rouses the reader to the activities that must issue in the discov-
ery of the character’s appeal.”
120 Ansgar Nünning
thy and understanding is repeatedly stressed by the detailed way in

which the narrator describes the setting and the characters. The pleth-
ora of detailed descriptions, which is characteristic of Victorian
novels and which derives from the attempt to provide a truthful pic-
ture of reality that is in accordance with the aesthetic norms, values
and conventions of realism, mainly serves to enhance the graphic
quality, visualization, and vividness of the characters and places. In
addition, they often serve to create coherence and to fulfil mnemo-
technic functions. The importance of these functions should not be
underestimated in view of the size of the standard three-decker novels
and the mode of serial publication. There are, for example, not only
many intertextual cross-references between Trollope’s Barchester
Towers (1857) and the later Barsetshire-novels but also a number of
frame-based descriptions which refer to information already provided
in the other works of the Barsetshire-cycle. Such intertextual descrip-
tive references also show that the narrator presupposes the reader’s
prior knowledge of earlier novels in the cycle: “It is hardly necessary
that I should here give to the public any lengthened biography of Mr.
Harding, up to the commencement of this tale.” (Trollope 1975: 12)
It may be noted in passing that what is arguably almost as
interesting as exploring the kinds and functions of descriptions in
Victorian fiction is to ask which aspects of the characters’ lives
authors and narrators typically refrain from describing. Metanarrative
and metadescriptive comments in Victorian novels often serve the
function of glossing over taboo areas or, conversely, of foregrounding
the external and internal censorship inherent in the system of litera-
ture of the time, areas that are typically omitted from the range of de-
scriptions. The following example from William Makepeace Thack-
eray’s Vanity Fair illustrates how references to omitted descriptions
can have a satiric function by throwing a few critical asides at
prevalent ideas of morality:
We must pass over a part of Mrs Rebecca Crawley’s biography with that lightness
and delicacy which the world demands – the moral world, that has, perhaps, no
particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called
by its proper name. (Thackeray 1967: 676).
Furthermore, descriptions in many Victorian novels also contribute to
poetological self-reflection. This poetological function is particularly
apparent in the early and later novels by George Eliot20, chapter 17 in
20
For a more detailed discussion, cf. A. Nünning (1989: 147-175, 242-265).
Adam Bede, tellingly entitled “In Which the Story Pauses a Little”,
being probably one of the most noteworthy examples. The narrator’s
reflections about “this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I de-
light in many Dutch paintings” (Eliot 1980: 223) provide a lot of
insight into the nature, quality and functions of the kind of description
that one finds in Eliot’s novels as well as in the works of many other
Victorian novelists (e. g. Dickens, Trollope and Hardy). The implied
poetological purpose of detailed and extended descriptions becomes
especially prominent in English novels influenced by the French
school of naturalism, in which detailed descriptions of the characters’
living standards and social and cultural milieu serve as a means of
explaining their dispositions and behaviours21. Both the realist and the
naturalist novel were “committed in a new way to the representation
of particulars, in character, scene, and environment” (Ronen 1997:
283), and to functionalizing such descriptions as a means of explain-
ing the characters and their actions.
The distinction between externally and internally focalized types
of descriptions allows us to identify one of the most significant
changes that occurred in respect of their forms and functions in the
Victorian fin de siècle, though there are, of course, a number of
important forerunners like Aphra Behn and Jane Austen22. In nine-
teenth-century realist novels most of the descriptions tend to be given
by an overt narrator who provides reliable information about the
properties of places, characters, and objects from an external, omnis-
cient point of view. In modernist fiction, by contrast, internally focal-
ized descriptions predominate (cf. Wolf in this volume: 29). One of
the concomitant effects is that the degree of objectivity that we as-
sociate with externally focalized descriptions decreases. The follow-
ing two examples from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, in which the settings and atmos-
pheres are described through the eyes of an observer sitting in a
hansom and from the point of view of the female protagonist respec-
tively, may serve to illustrate the subjective quality that distinguishes
the effects and functions of internally focalized description from its
externally focalized counterpart:
21
Cf. e. g. Wolf’s contribution to this volume: 60.
22
Cf. Fludernik (1996: 150), who observes that „Behn’s descriptions are frequently
subjective rather than objective, rendering the characters’ mutual perception of one
another’s qualities”.
122 Ansgar Nünning
Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian Gray
watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city […] The moon hung
low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a huge misshapen cloud
stretched a long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets
more narrow and gloomy. Once the man lost his way, and had to drive back half a
mile. A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The side-win-
dows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist. (Wilde 1982: 184)
And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to chil-
dren on a beach.
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her when, with a
little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the
French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm,
stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave;
the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was)
solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something
awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke
winding off them and the rooks rising, falling. (Woolf 1947: 5)
As these examples serve to underscore, the ubiquity of externally
focalized descriptions since the beginnings of the novel (if not as far
back as since the beginning of narration itself), which are one of the
hallmarks of the realist novel, tends to decline in modernism. This is
due to modernism’s ideal of narratorial objectivity and non-interfer-
ence (as opposed to character-centred subjectivity) and the preference
of a ‘dramatic’ or ‘scenic’ mode of narration, ideals that can be traced
back to Friedrich Spielhagen’s, Henry James’s, and Percy Lubbock’s
normative theories of the novel (cf. also Wolf 1993: 654). As a result,
in the consciousness novel description starts “to turn subjective, ren-
dering characters’ perceptions rather than mere quasi-objective back-
ground information” (Fludernik 1996: 151).
Numerous English novels from the second half of the twentieth
century demonstrate that descriptions can also fulfil metafictional
functions and that they can serve as an instrument of destroying the
diegetic illusion. One early but typical example is the game played by
the authorial narrator with the fictitious (and real) addressee in B. S.
Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry. The following two
metanarrative and metadescriptive narratorial asides show how
closely description and metafiction are connected in this novel:
For the following passage it seems to me necessary to attempt transcursion into
Christie’s mind; an illusion of transcursion, that is, of course, since you know
only too well in whose mind it all really takes place. (Johnson 1984: 23)
An attempt should be made to characterise Christie’s appearance. I do so with dif-
fidence, in the knowledge that such physical descriptions are rarely of value in a
novel. It is one of the limitations; and there are so many others. Many readers, I
should not be surprised to learn if appropriate evidence were capable of being re-
searched, do not read such descriptions at all, but skip to the next dialogue or
more readily assimilable section. Again, I have often read and heard said, many
readers apparently prefer to imagine the characters for themselves. That is what
draws them to the novel, that it stimulates their imagination! Imagining my char-
acters, indeed! Investing them with characteristics quite unknown to me, or even
at variance with such descriptions as I have given! (Ibid.: 51)
Christie is therefore an average shape, height, weight, build, and colour. Make
him what you will: probably in the image of yourself. (Ibid.: 51)
In many contemporary and postmodern novels – e. g. Salman Rush-
die’s Midnight’s Children (1981) or J. M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth
Costello (2003) – descriptions and metadescriptions are also partially
functionalized in such a metafictional way23. By foregrounding both
the conventions inherent in realist modes of description and the
reader’s share in the act of concretization, such metadescriptions not
only lay bare the artificiality and contingency of each and every
description, they also illuminate some of theoretical issues that the
contributions to the present volume set out to explore.
Despite the fragmentary character of this sketch of the various and
historically changing functions descriptions might fulfil, it should
have become clear that, depending on the kind of description we are
dealing with, different functions are dominant in each individual case.
As narrative language is polyfunctional, one can generally assume
that there are variable dominance relations between the different
functions and that they can overlap, intensify or relativize each other.
This survey moreover highlights that not only the forms, but also, and
especially, the functions of description are as much subject to
historical variability as other narrative modes and strategies.
5. Conclusion and areas for further research
When taking a retrospective look at the desiderata mentioned at the

beginning of this paper, the following preliminary conclusion can be
drawn. What I hope to have shown is that there are many different
types of descriptions in novels which can be distinguished on the
23
Cf. Lopes (1995: ch. 6) for a pioneering analysis of the use of self-reflexive de-
scriptions as “a metatextual/metadescriptive device pointing to its own limits and
possibilities” (ibid.: 5).
124 Ansgar Nünning
basis of various clearly definable criteria. The vast range of formal

types of description corresponds to a similar multitude of functions
that descriptive expressions can fulfil. Further work on the functional
hypotheses outlined in section 4 could render them more precise,
modify them or revise them. Considering the theoretical, definitional,
typological, and functional differences discussed in this paper, it is
self-evident that the broad field of description has not yet been treated
in a comprehensive, much less an exhaustive way.
The differentiated research of the forms, functions, and diachronic
development of descriptive commentary is still among the desiderata
of narratological research. The criteria proffered here not only allow
for a detailed analysis of descriptive passages in a novel or a short
story, but also lend themselves to a terminologically exact reconstruc-
tion of the development of the forms and functions of description over
various periods of literary history, not only in narrative fiction but in
other genres as well. The intriguing question of the use of different
forms of description in poetry and drama, for instance, and the poten-
tial applicability and usefulness of the categories sketched out in this
paper are complex issues which narratology has not even begun to
gauge.
Despite the productiveness of the critical industry, the questions
raised in this volume are still a very fertile area of investigation.
There are at least six important issues which have yet to be adequately
explored. One of them is the development of an exhaustive and full-
fledged theory of description24 fully integrating the insights recently
provided by cognitive narratology, psychonarratology, and rhetorical
narrative theorists as well as the refined conceptual frameworks and
sophisticated models developed by possible-worlds theory. Second,
what is needed is a more subtle and systematic account of the textual
stimuli and contextual frames that are involved in the naturalization of
descriptions, including more sophisticated analyses of the interplay
between textual data and interpretive choices. Third, the different
uses of description and, even more so, of metadescription in the works
of both contemporary novelists and authors from earlier periods, and
24
Cf. Cobley’s (1986: 395) summary of the state of art, which arguably still holds
true, the more so because none of the extant contributions to the theory of description
has even attempted to integrate the insights provided by cognitive narratology, psy-
chonarratology, and possible-worlds theory: “Discussions of description are still in a
tentative phase, and no exhaustive or completely satisfactory theory has been ad-
vanced.”
the ways in which they reflect or respond to changing aesthetic

norms, literary conventions, and cultural discourses, are just waiting
to be explored. Fourth, the history of the development of the narrative
technique known as ‘description’ has yet to be written because (at
least to my knowledge) no one has dared to provide an historical
overview spanning the period from the seventeenth century to the
twentieth. Fifth, since the generic scope of description has as yet
neither been properly defined nor even gauged, its uses, forms, and
functions across different genres, media, and disciplines provide a
highly fertile area of research. The use of description in genres other
than narrative fiction – for instance in dramatic genres, in poetry and
in travelogues – as well as in other media and domains (including law
and politics) deserves more attention than it has hitherto been given.
Lastly, taking a new look at the development of both narrative tech-
niques like description and the ways in which narratology has concep-
tualized them could be an important force in the current attempts to
historicize narrative theory25.
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Functions of Description in Poetry
Walter Bernhart
As reflection on description in poetry has a long European tradition in the context

of rhetoric, this essay starts out by discussing the main defining elements of
description in this rhetorical tradition, in the wake of the Aristotelian concept of
enargeia. It subsequently sketches the history of description in European poetry
by referring to prominent poems from the body of English literature and identify-
ing several functions which description was expected and seen to fulfil at various
stages in the development of poetry (for example, rhetorical effectiveness of
praise, ‘enargetic’ didacticism, triggering of emotional projections, grasping the
Ding an sich). In conclusion, a reception-oriented general model of poetic de-
scription is outlined that defines poetic description as a process in which mimetic,
imaginative, and emotive elements are fused.
In contrast to most of the other contributions to this volume, which

tread on virtually unexplored ground by investigating descriptive
processes in their respective media, this paper, dealing with descrip-
tion in poetry, has no need to start from scratch: poetry appears to be
the only medium of communication which can look back on a vener-
able tradition of thoughts on the subject. In view of the fact that
reflection on description in poetry goes back to antiquity and has
never been lost sight of in the history of poetics, I will start out by
summarizing briefly the traditional views of description in poetry, and
then sketch, in rather bold strokes, the historical development of de-
scriptive poetry in the European tradition. I will do so by looking at
individual poems from English literature, all of them being ‘high-
lights’ of English poetry, which may serve as an indication that de-
scription forms an essential element in the tradition of poetry and is
certainly no marginal phenomenon. As we go along, we will be able
to identify a number of functions which description has been claimed
to fulfil. I will round off my presentation by stating what I consider a
main spring and purpose of descriptive practices in poetry and discuss
my own modest model of descriptive activity in the arts. By intention,
my methodological point of departure is not narratology – however
valid and productive this perspective proves to be – but rhetoric.
130 Walter Bernhart
Interest in description is venerably old because “[u]ltimately, de-

scription should be considered as a strategy and an instancing of the
doctrine of imitation” (Webb/Weller 1993: 283). Surely, imitation
cannot blindly be seen as a naïve wish to reproduce reality in any
quasi-objective way, yet the old Aristotelian idea of giving ‘imitative’
evidence of what we experience in the empirical world is a strong
impulse which also forms the primary impulse for description. It is
important to notice, however, that already at a very early stage of
writing an awareness arose that description can be put to a variety of
distinctive uses, depending on the pragmatic functions description is
expected to perform in the communicative process. While “profes-
sional historiographers and forensic lawyer-orators” (i. e., people
working in the official, public sphere) aim at “veracity”, in poetic use
the aim of description is only “verisimilitude”, which implies that in
the literary sphere – which is our present concern – the “immediacy of
the effect of subjective representation is more important than the strict
truth of its contents” (ibid.: 284). Such an effect-oriented ‘subjective’
element is injected into poetic description because “there is in fact
always another governing intention (moralizing, didactic, persuasive,
emotive) which is served, rather than conditioned, by the technique of
description, which is rather to be considered as a rhetorical-poetic
strategy to be applied in genres established on other grounds, as occa-
sion demands” (ibid.: 288). Thus we can see that description takes on
a different shape – i. e., different from ‘veracity’-oriented cases –
when it appears in a ‘rhetorical-poetic’ role, depending on specific
intentions motivating the descriptive representation. This rhetorical
function of description arose very early in poetic history, although
Ernst Robert Curtius – the great scholar who has made us keenly
aware of the omnipresence of literary and rhetorical traditions –
makes the following interesting point: ‘In Theocritus and Virgil, such
descriptions (topothésia / topográphia) form only backdrops setting
the scene for pastoral poetry. Yet they soon become independent and
are made the subject of rhetoricising depictions.’1 This implies that
before rhetorical uses of description came up, there were neutral prac-
tices of topographical rendering which were more or less unrelated to
1
This and all subsequent translations from German are my own. “Bei Theokrit und
Virgil sind solche Schilderungen [topothésia / topográphia] nur inszenierende
Staffage für pastorale Dichtung. Sie werden aber bald losgelöst und zum Gegenstand
rhetorisierender Beschreibung gemacht.” (Curtius 1965: 202)
Functions of Description in Poetry 131
the rest of the text and merely formed insignificant backgrounds2.

(Yet, as we will see later, Curtius may have underestimated the func-
tion of topographia in Virgil’s Georgics.)
It is Heinrich F. Plett, who in his seminal study Rhetorik der
Affekte (1975) traces the afterlife of ancient rhetorical practices in
Renaissance Europe and places description in a similar context as
Curtius when he defines it as a ‘pathetic means of representation’ and
a ‘part of the treatment of affects’3. The point Plett makes is that de-
scription is seen as part of a number of rhetorical devices which guar-
antee the effect of movere, of ‘moving the passions’, and thus go
beyond the qualifications of the Horatian dyas of functions of art, i.
e., delectare aut prodesse (‘teach and delight’). Description as a
‘moving’ element of hypotyposis is thus a means of ‘heightening the
expressiveness’ and ‘perceptual presence’ of the representation
(“Ausdruckssteigerung bzw. Vergegenwärtigung”; Plett 1975: 52),
and the central quality which is identified as guaranteeing the
‘moving of the passions’ and to which description is able to contrib-
ute significantly is enargeia. This term refers to a quality that was
first described by Aristotle and, as a rhetorical principle of effective
presentation, is based on the exploitation of such epideictic (i. e.,
demonstrative and ornamental) devices as description, amplification
or digression4.
The importance of description for achieving enargeia is underlined
by Plett’s observation about the necessary precondition of enargeia,
namely, what he calls ‘the perceptual evidence (evidentia) of a de-
scription that is made palpable by concrete details (circumstantiae)’5.
This qualification emphasises the sensual, visual side of descriptive
effectiveness and at the same time highlights one further aspect which
has traditionally been considered as an indispensable prerequisite of
2
A parallel can be drawn to early forms of landscape painting which, in contrast to
later developments, do not yet enter into a vivid interaction with the main subject of
the painting, as is demonstrated, for example, by Götz Pochat’s reflections on Giotto’s
innovative “Flight into Egypt” (in this volume: 274f.).
3
“[...] pathetische[s] Darstellungsmittel”; “Teil der Affektbehandlung” (Plett 1975:
44).
4
“[Das] Prinzip der rhetorischen Enargeia [basiert auf der] Ausbeutung
epideiktischer Redemittel (descriptio, amplificatio, digressio) ” (ibid.: 111).
5
“[...] die sinnliche evidentia einer durch konkrete Details (circumstantiae) an-
schaulich gestalteten Beschreibung” (ibid.: 135).
132 Walter Bernhart
description, namely a wealth of observed details. Plett gives an exam-

ple taken from a poem by Gryphius, and it is indeed striking in its
baroque richness of detail:
Andreas Gryphius (1616 – 1664), “Die Hölle”
Ach! und weh!
Mord! Zetter! Jammer! Angst! Creutz! Marter! Würme! Plagen!
Pech! Folter! Hencker! Flamm! Stanck! Geister! Kälte! Zagen!
Ach vergeh!
Tieff’ und Höh’! 5
Meer! Hügel! Berge! Felß! wer kan die Pein ertragen?
[...]6
Plett’s commentary on this poem is telling: what he identifies is ‘a

vivid description (descriptio, ekphrasis) of a place of horror (locus
terribilis) giving a wealth (copia) of topographical details’7. Thus, the
aim of the description is again vividness (Anschaulichkeit), and in this
case the place described, the locus terribilis, is the opposite of its far
more popular counter-piece, the locus amoenus (‘pleasant place’).
Again, there is a reference to the great amount of details that con-
tribute to the effectiveness of the description, this time referred to as
copia. We may observe that ancient rhetoric had a keen awareness of
the essential elements involved in effective description, which is
reflected in the variety of terminology that was available.
It is a further interesting observation about ancient ideas of de-
scription that, in order to achieve the increased and heightened effect
of movere, i. e., in order to achieve ekplexis (i. e., astonishment,
amazement), “the depiction of fantastic, supernatural, and mythologi-
cal creatures” was “permitted, even encouraged” (Webb/Weller 1993:
284). This implies that the idea of descriptive ‘verisimilitude’ – in
contrast to ‘veracity’ –, as discussed before, was applied in a liberal
6
Qtd. Plett 2000: 209. English translation:
‘Alas! and woe!
Murder! Clamour! Misery! Anxiety! Cross! Torment! Worms! Plagues!
Pitch! Torture! Hangman! Flame! Stench! Ghosts! Chill! Quail!
Alas decay!
Depth and height!
Sea! Hills! Mountains! Rock! Who can bear the pain?
[…]’
7
“[…] eine anschauliche Beschreibung (descriptio, ekphrasis) eines Schreckens-
ortes (locus terribilis) in einer Fülle (copia) topographischer Details” (ibid.: 210).
sense and that the notion of circumstantiae or copia, i. e., of a great

number of concrete details, was considered essential for description,
but that the specific contents and the phenomenal origin of the details
was considered of less importance as long as it triggered the desired
effects (which, in fact, was even more likely to happen when non-
realistic items were involved).
Another important observation in older descriptive theory con-
cerns the degree of subjective and affective involvement that charac-
terizes enargeia, and consequently descriptio, in contrast to other
forms of representation. Plett quotes George Chapman, the great
Elizabethan poet and translator of Homer (well-known by Keats’s
famous poem, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”): “That,
Enargeia, or cleerness of representation, requird in absolute Poems is
not the perspicuous deliuery of a lowe inuention; but high, and harty
inuention exprest in most significant, an vnaffected phrase” (Chap-
man 1941: 49, qtd. Plett 1975: 135). This statement by Chapman is
not altogether unambiguous, for enargeia is here first paraphrased as
“cleerness of representation” – which is unusual, as it was customary
to stress the emotive and not the rational side of enargeia –, yet
Chapman then states that enargeia is “not [!] the perspicuous
deliuery”, where ‘perspicuousness’ necessarily implies ‘clarity’, ‘dis-
tinctness’, ‘intelligibility’. So it remains unclear whether clarity is a
specification of enargeia or not. (It is equally unclear what Chapman
has in mind when he talks about “absolute Poems”.)
Plett’s commentary on this passage from Chapman deserves our
attention. Enargeia, he says, ‘is not identical with unadorned per-
spicuitas […], which characterizes the representation of a low in-
vention (inventio); but equally not so with artificial affectation
(affectatio), to which many a high invention falls victim’; and refer-
ring to what Chapman further says in the source (cf. 49), Plett
observes: ‘The >enargetic< description is comparable to a painting
that shows >motion, spirit and life<.’8
This obviously identifies three levels of emotional involvement
that can be found in representations: one is characterized by una-
8
“[Enargeia] ist nicht identisch mit der schmucklosen perspicuitas […], welche
die Darstellung einer niedrigen Inventio kennzeichnet, aber auch nicht mit der gekün-
stelten affectatio, der manche hohe ‚Erfindung’ zum Opfer fällt [...]. Die ‚enargeti-
sche’ Darstellung wird mit einem Gemälde verglichen, das ‚motion, spirit and life’
besitzt.” (Plett 1975: 135)
134 Walter Bernhart
dorned clarity (‘schmucklose perspicuitas’), one by emotive visual-

ization (‘significant and unaffected’ pictorial enargeia), and one by
artificial affectation (‘gekünstelte affectatio’). The first form reminds
us of the type of representation, already twice referred to, that was
found fit for historians and legal orators, while the second form is the
one that Chapman recommends for poetic use, i. e., the descriptive
mode. It is interesting that the third form, affectatio, has clearly
negative connotations for Chapman.
This is interesting because elsewhere, and generally, in Renais-
sance aesthetics we find a substantial debate about a further, more
intense form of affective, ‘moving’ delivery. This other, heightened
form of effective rhetoric was called energeia, and it was often con-
fused with enargeia. Both terms had been introduced by Aristotle, but
from the very beginning it proved difficult to clearly distinguish one
style from the other. I have elsewhere gone into this issue at some
length (cf. Bernhart 1993a), but for the present purpose we can more
or less safely follow Plett’s attempts at distinguishing energeia and
enargeia: ‘(…) that Energeia refers to a style that is made dynamic
through a pathetic-visual vividness of representation, while Enargeia
refers to the perceptual evidence of detailed descriptions’9; according-
ly, the distinction is one between a ‘vivid pictorial style’ (enargeia)
and a ‘dynamic motional style’ (energeia)10. Thus, energeia is the
more active and more ‘passionate’ mode of the two – and it is usually
associated with music –; enargeia, by contrast, is seen as more
passive, more perceptual and evocative – and is usually associated
with painting. Plett’s definition of enargeia as ‘perceptual evidence of
detailed descriptions’ makes its point clearly and convincingly. (In
contrast, the fact that energeia is defined by Plett as ‘pathetisch-
anschauliche Verlebendigung’ [‘pathetic-visual vividness’] and
enargeia as ‘anschaulicher Bildstil’ [‘vivid pictorial style’] is less
convincing and demonstrates that Anschaulichkeit [‘vividness’] is a
key term, but notoriously vague as it is applied to both contrastive
styles. This issue will be taken up again later.)
9
“[...] dass die Energeia eher die Dynamisierung des Stils durch pathetisch-
anschauliche Verlebendigung der Darstellung, die Enargeia hingegen eher die sinn-
liche Evidenz einer detaillierten Beschreibung bezeichnet.” (Plett 1975: 183)
10
“Diskriminierung von anschaulichem Bildstil (enargeia) und dynamischem Bewe-
gungsstil (energeia)” (ibid.: 187).
The following quotation may serve as a means of rounding off the

discussion of traditional notions of description: “Hypotyposis [...] etiā
[...] Enargia, Euidēntia, Illustratio, Suffiguratio, Demonstratio, De-
scriptio, Effictio, Subiectio sub oculos appelatur.” This quotation viv-
idly demonstrates the prominent role which description played in
earlier aesthetics as a mode of representation. It is from Joannes
Susenbrotus, the Dutch Humanist (Antwerp, 1566; qtd. Plett 1975:
75), and distinctly shows what a wealth of terms existed to be used for
labelling a rhetorical mode that was frequently applied and considered
a most effective means of communicating experience.
I will now turn to sketching – in bold strokes, as already suggested
– the development of descriptive poetry from the earlier forms, which
follow the principles just outlined, through manifestations in the
nineteenth century, leading up to modernist conceptions of descriptive
poetry in the twentieth century. As a guideline for this historical
survey I will use the observation made by the following statement,
which identifies those areas of experience to which descriptive tech-
niques have most frequently been applied: “In practice, d.[escriptive]
technique has been applied mainly: (1) to the female body […]; (2) to
man’s surroundings and habitat, whether natural or cultivated land-
scape or crafted architecture; and (3) to isolated objects, whether
utensils or representational works of art.” (Webb/Weller 1993: 284)
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Sonnet 130: “My Mistress’ Eyes
Are Nothing Like the Sun” (1590s)
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, 5
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound. 10
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
(Shakespeare: online)
Shakespeare’s popular sonnet 130 is famous for its anti-Petrarchist

stance: it wittily undermines the typical Petrarchist practice of prais-
136 Walter Bernhart
ing the beauty of the idealized beloved lady by describing the attrac-
tive details of her appearance and behaviour. As is well-known, it was
standard practice to describe admiringly the lady’s sun-like eyes, her
coral lips, snowy breasts, fair hair, rosy cheeks, her musical speech
etc. What we find in this sonnet, however, is a far more realistic view
of the lady, e. g.: “And in some perfumes is there more delight / Than
in the breath that from my mistress reeks” (ll. 7-8; “reeks”, inciden-
tally, is here used without the modern negative connotation). Yet, as
the final couplet demonstrates, the speaker does not give up one of the
most fundamental functions of description in poetry, namely to
acclaim and praise the lady. In fact, his praise is higher than conven-
tional praise is because he takes her as a real woman and does not
simply apply mechanically the standard favourable attributes. But the
effectiveness of the realistic description of the woman would be miss-
ing if Shakespeare had not been able to go back to the descriptive
practice of the Petrarchist topoi.
Robert Herrick’s “Delight in Disorder” is one of the great achieve-
ments of seventeenth-century Cavalier poetry, which stood in the neo-
classical tradition and favoured elegant writing with the purpose of
propagating a carpe-diem attitude.
Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674), “Delight in Disorder” (1648)
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there 5
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat; 10
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
(Herrick: online)
This poem is firmly rooted in the tradition of praising a woman by

describing her beauty, and it does so by carefully scanning her appear-
ance from top (shoulders) to bottom (shoes). Yet again, as in Shake-
speare’s sonnet, this is done with a twist. For it is the central idea of
the poem, expressed in the title, that the woman is more ‘bewitching’
(l. 13) because her dress is not in perfect order, as a traditional praise
would have it. So the praise is obviously there, but again with a more
realistic, unconventional touch. Yet this unusual idea does not at all
exhaust the poem. Its title, in conjunction with the final couplet,
makes an obvious additional statement of a more abstract nature: it
expresses an aesthetic maxim, namely that art is most convincing
when it combines order with disorder. (There should be ‘precision’ –
according to the last line – but not too much of it.) This prefigures
ideas of twentieth-century modernist ‘deviation aesthetics’. (Inciden-
tally, the phrase “too precise” in the last line has another fine, topical
reference: seventeenth-century Puritans were attacked for their “too
precise” reading of the Bible, and Herrick, as a Royalist Cavalier,
clearly took side against them in the Civil War situation of the 1640s.)
However, a close reading of the poem will reveal that it has yet
another dimension. For the use of adjectives in conjunction with the
parts of the dress described is quite unusual. After all, can a “lace”
really be “erring”, or a “cuff” be “neglectful”, or a “petticoat” be
“tempestuous”? These adjectives refer far more appropriately to hu-
man beings than to objects and, thus, metonymically, to the wearer of
the dress than to the dress itself. So it is easy to see that the poem, on
a further level, not only describes the ideal dress of the woman but at
the same time tells her what the speaker expects of her behaviour,
namely, that she should be “erring”, “neglectful”, “careless” and
“tempestuous”. In other words, the particular description in this poem
is also used as a means of encouraging the woman to give in to the
speaker’s amorous advances. Thus, the poem takes up – in disguise –
the topoi of ‘invitation to love’ and of carpe diem and uses the topos
of describing a woman’s beauty (however unconventionally so in this
case) for that purpose. This poem neatly demonstrates what has been
said before, that poetic description in most cases follows “another
governing intention” (as quoted above) beyond the mere enumeration
of observed details. In the particular case of Herrick’s descriptive
poem “Delight in Disorder” we find a love poem in disguise, with an
additional (didactic) purpose of making a statement about art, and
with a hidden political reference.
Turning to landscape description, the second frequent area of de-
scriptions mentioned, I have chosen Pope’s “Windsor-Forest” because
it is not only one of the most successful topographical poems in the
English language, but also because it well demonstrates important
functions of description in traditional landscape poetry. It is one of
138 Walter Bernhart
the early works of Alexander Pope, who is the main representative of

neo-classical writing in England, and it was written soon after Queen
Anne had ascended the throne and England entered a phase of pros-
perity, frequently referred to as the Augustan Age. The first part of
the poem, from which the excerpt below is taken, was written in 1704,
the second part much later, in 1713, a few weeks before the signing of
the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought the Spanish War of Succession
to a conclusion – a very satisfactory conclusion for the British.
Windsor, of course, was the seat of the monarch, and the ‘forest’, in
contemporary understanding, was the part outside (foris) the common
law, so it does not only refer to woodland; it is in fact a legal term (cf.
Audra/Williams, eds. 1961: 135). Thus, the ‘forest’ indicates a de-
tached, pastoral sphere outside the common world, which can be
filled with various reminiscences and allusions.
Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), “Windsor-Forest” (1704/1713)
Thy forests, Windsor! and thy green retreats,
At once the Monarch’s and the Muse’s seats,
Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids!
Unlock your springs, and open all your shades.
Granville commands; your aid O Muses bring! 5
What Muse for Granville can refuse to sing?
The groves of Eden, vanish’d now so long,

Live in description, and look green in song:
These, were my breast inspir’d with equal flame,
Like them in beauty, should be like in fame 10
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water, seem to strive again;
Not Chaos like together crush’d and bruis’d,
But as the world, harmoniously confus’d:
Where order in variety we see, 15
And where, tho’ all things differ, all agree.
Here waving groves a checquer’d scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover’s warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress. 20
There, interspers’d in lawns and opening glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other’s shades.
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There wrapt in clouds the blueish hills ascend.
Ev’n the wild heath displays her purple dyes, 25
And ‘midst the desart fruitful fields arise,
That crown’d with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
Let India boast her plants, nor envy we

The weeping amber or the balmy tree, 30
While by our oaks the precious loads are born,
And realms commanded which those trees adorn.
Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
Tho’ Gods assembled grace his tow’ring height,
Than what more humble mountains offer here, 35
Where, in their blessings, all those Gods appear.
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown’d,
Here blushing Flora paints th’ enamel’d ground,
Here Ceres’ gifts in waving prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper’s hand; 40
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a Stuart reigns.
[…]
(Pope: online)
In this opening of the poem, after the invocation, Windsor-Forest is

first compared to the Garden of Eden: “The groves of Eden, vanish’d
now so long, / Live in description, and look green in song” (ll. 7-8).
This is interesting in our context as it casually expresses the tradi-
tional view that description is a means of ‘giving life’ to things past
(“Live in description”), just as the gardens remain “green” (i. e., fresh
and full of life) in song. As the commentary in the esteemed Twicken-
ham Edition of Pope’s works points out, “[…] the first long para-
graph, ll. 7-42, reflects not only the order and variety of a cosmos
governed by God, but also the peace and plenty of a kingdom gov-
erned by a Stuart queen [Anne].” (Audra/Williams, eds. 1961: 133-
134) One can see that neo-classical topographical poetry still works
within the traditional conceptual framework of the Great Chain of
Being, according to which the planes of existence are coordinated by
a “system of analogical correspondences”: thus, the topographical
level reflects the cosmic and the political levels and cannot be dis-
sociated from them. This idea is more closely developed in the fol-
lowing quotation:
In a poem like Windsor-Forest one cannot expect, nor does one often find, purely
descriptive scenes of nature: the setting of the poem is always offering its ana-
logue to human experience. It is not that the poem offers one a scene from nature
and then injects into it a moral or ethical prescription; the two elements are rather
fused in the one act of perception, for the poet in this instance is discovering
meanings inherent in nature, not adding one thing to another. (Ibid.: 133)
The leading writers of the period were well aware of this condition, as
comes out in two further quotations, one by Pope and one by Joseph
140 Walter Bernhart
Addison, the well-known contemporary dramatist and author of moral

weeklies such as The Spectator. Pope talks about Homer and Addison
about Virgil in very similar terms:
Pope observes in Homer an “indirect and oblique manner of introducing moral
Sentences and Instructions”; “the Description of Places, and Images rais’d by the
Poet, are […] leading into some Reflection, upon moral Life or political Institu-
tion: Much in the same manner as the real Sight of such Scenes and Prospects is
apt to give the Mind a compos’d Turn, and incline it to Thoughts and Contempla-
tions that have a Relation to the Object.” (Pope’s Note on Iliad, bk. 16, l. 466,
1716; qtd. ibid.: 134)
And Addison:
But this kind of poetry [i. e., Virgil’s Georgics] […] raises in our minds a pleas-
ing variety of scenes and landscapes, whilst it teaches us; and makes the driest of
its precepts look like a description […] to suggest a truth indirectly, and without
giving us a full and open view of it, […] lead the imagination into all the parts
that lie concealed. (Addison in “Dryden’s Virgil”, 1698; qtd. ibid.: 135)
Again, Addison sees description as surpassing the teaching of ‘dry
precepts’. The emphasis on the indirectness of moral and political
instruction in both passages underlines the observation that the de-
scriptive process is not seen independently from any additional mean-
ings it may generate analogically. The idea of a fusion of description
and concomitant reflective (in this case didactic) meaning touches on
a central concern of lyric expressiveness and stresses the fact –
already twice referred to before – that activities, descriptive of
empirical observation, are never an end in themselves but always
serve a purpose beyond. This situation can be seen as a defining quali-
ty of lyric manifestations, as I have elaborated on elsewhere (cf.
Bernhart 1993b) and to which I shall come back later.
With the rise of Romanticism in the eighteenth century the fusion
just addressed gains in intensity, and the sphere of experience re-
flected in poetic descriptions becomes more personal and subjective.
Nature descriptions no longer mirror in an analogous way such
conditions as are referred to by the speaker for – ultimately, and in the
wider sense – moral purposes: nature now becomes a sphere onto
which inner feelings and emotional conditions of the speaker can be
projected, and what is actually observed in nature loses in importance
over what the natural sight triggers in the perceptive poetic mind. In
Romantic nature poetry, “the emotions, which would otherwise be
aroused by the mental apprehension of the d.[escriptive] details, are
directly expressed in wholly subjective terms. Only passing references
are made to material, constituent elements of the natural world as

normally perceived.” (Webb/Weller 1993: 287) This situation may be
demonstrated by looking at a Wordsworth poem – one of his most
popular poems –, which was stimulated by the experience of an early
morning in the midst of London.
William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), “Composed upon Westminster
Bridge, September 3, 1802”
EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 5
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; 10
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
(Wordsworth, online)
True, in this poem we find references to the river Thames and to

“Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples”, and they are described
as being “bright and glittering”, gently ‘gliding’, “silent, bare” and
“still”. Yet these observations, described in terms of sensual percep-
tions, do not play a major role in the poem; what is far more promi-
nent is the effect which the general impression of the scene has on the
enthusiastic observer. He experiences “majesty”, “beauty”, “splen-
dour”, “deep” “calm”, a free “sweet will”, a “mighty heart” perfectly
at rest: even the houses “seem asleep”. And, being no ‘dull soul’, this
experience puts him into a heightened state of excitement, he is deep-
ly ‘touched’, cries out to God, and reverts to anaphoric repetition of
stating that he has ‘never, never, never’ seen anything like it. Cer-
tainly, it is the strength of this poem – and of all similar achievements
in the Romantic tradition – that we find that overpowering response
by the speaker to an experience in nature. (In fact, it is a characteristic
feature of this particular poem that it treats the experience of the city
of London as if it were an experience of nature: the city is seen in a
row with “valley, rock, or hill”, l. 10.) In the context of our discussion
of functions of description in poetry, we can observe that in much
142 Walter Bernhart
Romantic poetry description becomes a trigger for subjective

impressions which are projected onto the situation described. Yet the
situation itself, i. e., the actually observed sights, lose substantial sig-
nificance. (Any comparison between Dorothy Wordsworth’s entries
into her journals and the poems which William made out of them can
account for this condition.)
The following poem, Edward Lear’s humorous self-portrait, “How
Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!”, is a typical Victorian poem and, as
such, a characteristic example of English nonsense poetry.
Edward Lear (1812 – 1888), “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!”
(1846)
“How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!”
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough.
His mind is concrete and fastidious; 5
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.
He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
Leastways if you reckon two thumbs; 10
Long ago he was one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.
He sits in a beautiful parlour,
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of Marsala, 15
But never gets tipsy at all.
He has many friends, lay men and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat. 20
When he walks in waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, “He’s gone out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!”
He weeps by the side of the ocean, 25
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill.
He reads, but he cannot speak, Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer: 30
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
(Lear: online)
This poem shows us that the descriptive mode is a very helpful

technique for achieving nonsense effects. If one takes a descriptive
attitude, as is done in this poem, and enumerates elements that are
clearly unconnected, like in the following stanza,
He has many friends, lay men and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat. (ll. 17-20)
a comical effect is achieved that could not be achieved without the
expectation of a coherence of elements as it is characteristic of de-
scriptions. This effect of “additive incongruence”, as Dieter Petzold
has called it (1972: 10-43), is typical of nonsense poetry and would
not work without the conceptual frame of coherence in descriptive
practices.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, a representative of the late-Victorian
period, is an author who, in a fascinating way, is placed at the border-
line between Victorianism and Modernism.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889), “Pied Beauty” (1877)
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted & pieced – fold, fallow, & plough; 5
And áll trades, their gear & tackle & trim.
All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd, (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: 10
Práise hím.
(Hopkins: online)
Hopkins’s well-known poem “Pied Beauty” shows a typical Victorian

love of detail and is again characterized by a basically descriptive
mode of presentation. What makes the poem exceptional in its histori-
cal context, though, is its extremely condensed and compressed style,
which turns the poem into a difficult text. (Typically it is also a son-
net that appears in a reduced form, as a so-called ‘curtal sonnet’.) Of
special interest in the present context is the particular function the
144 Walter Bernhart
description fulfils in this poem. On the one hand, it is clearly placed

in the old tradition of praise – quite directly so, as the concluding line
spells out. Hopkins, who was a Jesuit priest, used the poem to express
his admiration for God’s creation by stressing the beauty and
enormous variety of the created world. Yet, on the other hand, the
way in which the numerous elements are described demonstrates a
high level of close natural observation. A particularly difficult phrase,
as an example, is “Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” (l. 4). The observa-
tion is that chestnuts, when they fall from the tree, break their shell
and reveal the fresh inner fruit with its colour that reminds one of
firecoal. The point to be made is that in such a poem the careful and
detailed natural description becomes very much a value in itself and
leaves behind Romantic notions of nature as a sphere to be used for
subjective projections. True, the motivation for the close observation
of nature in Hopkins seems equally enthusiastic as with the Roman-
tics, but in his case the enthusiasm springs from the religious impulse
of wanting to give praise to the creator.
Thus, the poetry of Hopkins is typically transitional and takes a
decisive step in the direction of later Imagist and modernist tech-
niques. A famous statement by Ezra Pound also applies very well to
Hopkins’s text: namely, that poetry – following Imagist notions –
should present a “direct treatment of the ‘thing’” and aims at “con-
centration on the object and realistic rendering of the external world”;
the poem “intensifies its objective reality rather than expressing the
subjective feelings of the poet” (Coffman 1993: 574). Similarly, it has
been observed about American Objectivist poetry of the 1930s that it
“presents concrete objects not in order to convey abstract ideas but for
the sake of their sensuous qualities and haecceity” (Berry 1993: 849).
(This last term, incidentally, in its original Latin form, haecceitas,
was already used by Hopkins in order to refer to his interest in the
‘thisness’ of things.) What Pound’s conception of poetry implies is a
radical exclusion not only of subjective feelings, but also of any
conceptual interpretation; direct sensual experience is meant to be the
poem’s exclusive aim and purpose. One consequence of this poetics is
a radical reduction of the poems, culminating in Pound’s famous
haiku-like texts such as the – at the time sensational – “In a Station of
the Metro”:
Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972), “In a Station of the Metro” (1913)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
(Pound: online)
Pound’s own, very telling story about the genesis of this little gem11
makes a few points of interest in our context. Pound points out that he
had a strong impression of faces when he once got out of a metro
station, and he calls this impression his “metro emotion”. The context
clarifies that he is not talking about any personal emotion but about a
strong sense of beauty that stimulates him to give it expression. Yet
he finds it impossible to give this experience expression in words, but
more so in colours, and he wishes to develop a separate, new “‘non-
representative’” “language in colour” to express such experiences.
Being a poet, he after all sits down to write about his experience, at
first it is a poem of thirty lines, but then – as it lacks intensity – he
radically reduces it and ends up with the famous two lines. These
lines appear to be “meaningless” to him but obviously form an equiv-
alent to his original idea of expressing himself in a “language in
colour”. The point of Pound’s argument seems to be that he wanted to
11
“Three years ago in Paris I got out of a ‘metro’ train at La Concorde, and saw
suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child's
face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what
this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as
lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue
Raynouard, I was still trying, and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean
that I found words, but there came an equation ... not in speech, but in little spotches
of colour. It was just that – […]. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a lan-
guage in colour. […] That evening, in the Rue Raynouard, I realised quite vividly that
if I were a painter, or if I had, often, that kind of emotion, or even if I had the energy
to get paints and brushes and keep at it, I might found a new school of painting, of
‘non-representative’ painting […]. The 'one image poem' is a form of super-position,
that is to say it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the
impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and
destroyed it because it was what we call work 'of second intensity.' Six months later I
made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like [sic]
sentence:
‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough.’
I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a
poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and
objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.” (Pound 1914)
146 Walter Bernhart
find a verbal expression that represented as closely as possible a

strong visual impression without any other mental interference. The
purpose of this procedure is what has already been observed, namely,
to grasp the haecceitas, the ‘thisness’, of things. This intention comes
out in the last sentence of his reflection when Pound says that “a thing
outward and objective […] darts into a thing inward and subjective”.
This conforms with what the Dinggedicht in the German tradition also
aims at, defined as follows:
[The] descriptive exactitude [of the ‘Dinggedicht’] results from a process of
intense observation that yields insights, often epiphanous in their overpowering
suddenness, into the essential nature of things. […] Such transcending of surface
descriptions aims at capturing a symbolic and emotive content that is an indissolu-
ble part of a material exterior, which shows the D.[inggedicht] to be the last
intensification of the ideal symbolist poem. (Winkler 1993: 295)
In the context of the present discussion it can be observed that the
modernist Dinggedicht forms a case of descriptive poetry which radi-
cally eliminates earlier functions of description, such as those dis-
cussed in this paper: rhetorical effectiveness of praise, ‘enargetic’ di-
dacticism, springboard for emotional projection, and others. At first
sight it seems to serve the purpose of drastically reduced, quasi-
objective descriptions without any ulterior motivation (as has also
been claimed, for example, for Duchamp’s urinal). Yet what the last
quotations have shown is that even these skeletal descriptions serve a
simultaneous symbolist purpose and adopt the function of defining as
truly as possible the Ding an sich. This is also what can be made
responsible for the quasi-magical quality which radiates from such
texts.
A final text example may be able to further back up this point.
William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963), “The Red Wheelbarrow”
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain 5
water
beside the white
chickens.
(Williams: online)
Williams’s popular poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” is clearly in the

tradition of the Dinggedicht and has puzzled many readers by its
obvious ‘meaninglessness’, in Pound’s terms. The point that has
frequently been made about this poem is that the typical line-breaking
serves the purpose of drawing attention to the semantic components
of words and phrases like “wheelbarrow”, “rainwater” or “white
chickens”. This de-automatisation of word usage (in the Russian
Formalists’ sense) reactivates genuine perception and imaginatively
evokes in the reader actual sense experiences such as “wheel”,
“barrow”, “rain”, “water” etc., thus stimulating a distinctly descriptive
approach with the purpose of grasping and invoking the Ding an sich.
At the same time, of course, the colour adjectives “red” and “white”
regain their visual distinctness, and a vivid picture of the white
chickens besides the red wheelbarrow may emerge. Much has been
made in the discussions of the poem of the fact that the wheelbarrow
is “glazed”, which not only adds a particular visual touch to the tool
but also implies a transitoriness of the impression given because the
sun will soon dry up the water and destroy the glaze. Of course, the
crux of the poem is its introductory section, which is not descriptive –
“so much depends / upon” – but, in a way, raises the finger and eye-
brow in portentous significance. There is no need at present to enter
into any speculations about possible ‘meanings’ of this opening of the
poem12. The point to be made here is that in this opening we have a
signal in the text which again indicates that the careful and percep-
tually evocative description in the poem should not be seen as an end
in itself. Even in this case some moral purpose seems to be looming
large (even if only so in ironical terms).
To come to a conclusion: Werner Wolf has thoroughly surveyed
all possible facets that may be of interest in an assessment of descrip-
tion (in this volume). So I also find a convenient starting point for a
summary of my findings in his impressive overview.
I started my reflections on description in poetry by referring to the
fact that from the beginning critics have found it necessary to
distinguish between non-aesthetic and aesthetic forms of description.
Wolf has carefully analysed the various conditions that constitute the
descriptive in general terms, as a macro-mode of representation, and
12
This is a typical attempt at interpretation: “The wheelbarrow is one of the simplest
machines, combining in its form the wheel and the inclined plane, two of the five
simple machines known to Archimedes.” (Ahearn 1994: 3)
148 Walter Bernhart
has arrived at a “tentative definition of description” (in this volume:

34) (whose high degree of authority renders the purported tentative-
ness largely ornamental). As far as the current topic of description in
poetry – i. e., a particularly intensive form of aesthetic articulation –
is concerned, I can also find a point of entry in two of Wolf’s state-
ments and can develop my argument from them.
The first statement by Wolf says that “[t]he main purpose of
descriptions is not mere identification of […] concrete phenomena but
their vivid representation […]. This leads to a particular experien-
tiality […].” (In this volume: 35) The other statement is Wolf’s
reference to what Ernst Gombrich called “‘the beholder’s share’” in
the reception of aesthetic objects (1969/1977: 154-169). Wolf says:
“[…] it is indeed in the recipient’s mind, in his or her imagination,
that the signs of a text or representation have to coalesce into some-
thing that can be identified and experienced in analogy to the real-life
phenomena referred to in the respective description.” (Ibid.: 36) Here
the idea finds expression that vivid, imaginative evocation is a central
feature of description, an idea which has been referred to in the above
discussion of enargeia. A concise reference to these essential factors
involved in poetic description can be found in the following state-
ment:
Vividness or enargeia […] is the effective quality deriving from poetic descrip-
tion. […] The stimulation of inward vision in the imagination […] and the arousal
of concomitant feelings are closely linked. The practical aim is to evoke vividly
the scene of an action or the situation of an object. (Webb/Weller 1993: 284)
The “beholder’s share” in establishing the descriptive quality of an
utterance lies in his productive participation in the act by activating
his “inward vision” and, simultaneously, forming an emotional re-
sponse. This procedure is a complex fused mental/emotional activity
which finds a further convincing assessment in the following passage:
It is the meshing of images (phantasiai) with emotions (pathe) which underlies
the affective power of description. Ultimately, these literary and psycho-physical
effects all aspire to the mimetic condition, which revivifies static linguistic con-
structions so that they reproduce subjectively, via artistic means, the vitality and
physical immediacy of natural experience. […] Poetry thus invests static spatial
objects with vitality by transfusing into them its own rhythmic, temporal
succession. (Ibid.: 285)
The point to be made, by way of summary, is, therefore, that poetic
description is an activity that consists of the imaginative evocation
(phantasiai) of prior experience of static phenomena and a concomi-
tant emotional involvement (pathe) which accounts for description’s
affective effectiveness (enargeia). An essential precondition for this

process to unfold is that the spatial experience is converted into a tem-
poral sequence; it is only in the temporal dimension that the imagi-
native act and the emotional response can take place and develop.
Thus, in the strictest sense, it is not a poetic text itself that is (possi-
bly) descriptive, but the process of its reception. Similarly one could
argue that it is not a painting – like Breughel’s “Return of the
Hunters”, e. g. – that is itself descriptive; it is descriptive insofar as it
invites perceptive observers to read it ‘descriptively’, i. e., it invites
them to recall in their imagination emotionally coloured experiences
of objects and events as they find them in the painting. Obviously, the
textual constitution of the poem or painting will trigger to a greater or
to a lesser degree this descriptive process: more details will ask for
longer, temporally more extended evocations and will thus more
favourably encourage a ‘descriptive’ response; but even a work less
characterized by copia of detail may stimulate in a ‘descriptively’
inclined mind a strong descriptive response. What I argue is that –
just as one needs, e. g., a “narrative impulse”, according to Jean-
Jacques Nattiez (1990: 257), to experience narrativity in music – so
one needs a ‘descriptive impulse’ in order to experience descriptivity
in poetry, or painting, or music, or whichever aesthetic medium.
It is obvious that this view of description takes a pragmatic,
reception-oriented stance; it is neither structuralist/text-oriented, nor
intentionalist/sender-oriented, but – as suggested at the start –
rhetorical/receiver-oriented.
Can such an approach account for works that are primarily sender-
or text-oriented? We have seen that in Romantic poetry the descrip-
tive process as here described is overruled, as it were, by the intense
projection of the poet’s subjective effusions so that, in fact, a sender-
oriented condition prevails. Yet insofar as descriptive elements, i. e.,
elements that encourage a descriptive response in the reader, appear
in the texts, they underlie – I would argue – the same conditions as
here described. In fact, texts emotionally charged by the poet will
facilitate imaginative-emotional responses in the reader. As for Imag-
ist poems or Dinggedichte: by attempting to present the Ding an sich
in an as much as possible unmediated form, they do just the same. As
we have heard from Pound: he wants to evoke as authentically as
possible an original sense impression and a concomitant emotion – his
“metro emotion” –, and he can again only do so – even in his ex-
tremely short pieces – by activating the time dimension, i. e., by
150 Walter Bernhart
giving the reader/viewer time to establish and develop the image and
the emotion. So even extremely text-centred modernist works acquire
their descriptive quality only in the pragmatic context.
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885.
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575.
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Description in American Nature Writing
Arno Heller
The objective of the following investigation is to apply the narratological defini-

tion of the descriptive to a specific cultural context: American nature writing as a
form of non-fiction prose based on the accurate and first-hand observation and
description of natural phenomena. While the narrative fictionalization of nature,
wilderness in particular, has always played an essential role in American cultural
and literary history from Cooper, the Hudson River School of painting, Transcen-
dentalism and regionalism up to contemporary Native American literature, the
tradition of descriptive nature writing, despite its great quantity and quality, has
largely been neglected by literary scholarship. From its beginnings it has moved
away from a traditionally anthropocentric approach to nature towards an increas-
ingly ecocentric one. Starting out from Thoreau’s Journal, the paper refers to
three 20th-century nature writers – Edward Abbey, Ann Zwinger, Charles
Bowden, and to similar phenomena in the poetry of A. R. Ammons, the landscape
painting of Georgia O’Keeffe, and in the documentary film Koyaanisqatsi. The
concept of the descriptive in the works discussed corresponds to what Lawrence
Buell has called a “new aesthetics of relinquishment”, which reduces narrative
interpretation in favour of the intense observation and description of natural
surfaces. In the wake of this, the descriptive has taken on new ecological, cultural
and aesthetic functions.
1. Introduction
The retreat of narration in favour of description, the emphasis on

experiential sense data and representational functions rather than on
explanation and interpretation have been central aspects of American
nature writing. It is a form of nonfictional descriptive prose based on
the accurate and intense first-hand observation of natural phenomena.
Today it has become a popular literary fashion in the U. S., with
nature writing clubs, nature journals and instruction manuals offering
their services (see Petersen 2001). Moreover, it has contributed
conspicuously to the ongoing ecological and ecocritical discussion
(see Payne 1996). The sheer mass of local historians, geographers,
environmentalists, writers, poets, visual artists, and filmmakers is
unprecedented, and the trend is as expansive as it is diverse. More-
over, nature writing is part of an American tradition that is longer and
154 Arno Heller
larger than in most other national literatures. Since the publication of

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in 1854 hundreds of nature writers
from John Muir, John Burroughs and Aldo Leopold to Rachel Carson,
Annie Dillard, or Barrie Lopez have followed suit and attracted large
reading audiences (cf. Lyons 1986: 302-317). Paradoxically, literary
scholarship so far has largely neglected this type of literature,
delegating it to other fields such as natural history, environmental and
ecological studies, geography, or biology. Although literary scholars
show great interest in nature poetry and fiction and emphasize nature
as a major theme in American literary history, they appear to be
generally disinterested in the nonfictional, essentially descriptive
presentations of the natural environment and have marginalized them
in the literary curriculum. Lawrence Buell, who is one of the few
notable exceptions, comments on this phenomenon in his book The
Environmental Imagination. Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Forma-
tion of American Culture (1995) in the following way:
Apart from Walden and a few other works by Thoreau [...] nonfictional writing
about nature scarcely exists from the standpoint of American literary studies, even
though by any measure it has flourished for more than a century and has bur-
geoned vigorously in the nuclear age. (Buell 1995: 8)
For the sake of definition and contrast it may be useful to start out
with a brief exemplary outline of nature narratives in American litera-
ture and their equivalents in the visual arts before turning to nature
writing proper.
2. Narrative Nature Description in American Literature and the

Visual Arts
A strong preoccupation with wild nature or wilderness has always

been an essential part of American cultural history. One crucial point
of the national ideology of the American Dream has been, as the cul-
tural historian Perry Miller points out in Nature’s Nation (1967), “that
because America, beyond all nations, is in perpetual touch with Na-
ture, it need not fear the debauchery of the artificial, the urban, the
civilized” (Miller 1967: 203). In contrast to Europe where the clearing
and settling of the land lies far back in the past and cultivated land-
scapes predominate, the clash between wilderness and civilization has
occupied the very center of the American experience, including the
literature deriving from it (cf. Overland 1979: 111). Nevertheless, the
Description in American Nature Writing 155
equation of the New World’s ‘Virgin Land’ with the national spirit
has never been as uncontroversial as one might expect. From the very
beginning there has also existed a strange discrepancy between idea
and reality. Although wild nature and the ‘wilderness experience’
served as a kind of mythic vision the concrete reality of American life
has always been running counter to it. A utilitarian, sometimes even
hostile attitude towards wild nature dominated public opinion in the
U. S. for a long time. It goes as far back as the Puritans in the 17th
century, who spoke of America as a “hideous and desolate wilder-
ness”, an “evil place of untractable land inhabited by wild beasts and
heathen savages” (Bradford 1952: 62). A pervasive fear that the vast
continent, inhabited by pagan savages, wild animals, witches and
demons of all sorts would eventually swallow up the intruders from
the Old World haunted the Puritan imagination. To the Puritan mind
wilderness was something that had to be subdued in the name of God,
a dismal stage to be overcome on the way to the New Jerusalem. It is
not by coincidence that one of the earliest novels written in America,
Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly (1799), transplants elements
of English Gothic literature into the American wilderness.
In the 19th century the will to conquer the wild continent and its
vast open spaces in the name of ‘Manifest Destiny’, to tame the wil-
derness and to push civilization west to the shores of the Pacific was
the driving force behind the Westward Expansion (cf. Smith 1950:
123-132). To the American frontiersmen, pioneers and early settlers
wilderness was an opponent that had to be defeated by axe and plow
and subjected to useful purposes in the name of progress. As Roderick
Nash observes in his book Wilderness and the American Mind (1973),
“the driving impulse was always to carve a garden from the wilds; to
make an island of spiritual light in the surrounding darkness” (Nash
1973: 35). It is not surprising, therefore, that the ‘wilderness idea’
dominating so much of American nature writing did not originate in
the untouched wild regions of the West but in the cities and cultural
centers on the East coast (cf. Nash 1973: 44-66). The rise of Romanti-
cism and Transcendentalism from the 1830s onwards gave the deci-
sive impulses to the concept of the wild as a source of spiritual and
aesthetic values. It was a high-cultural and urban phenomenon cele-
brated by a relatively small and privileged intellectual elite, which
largely imported it from English, French and German Romanticism.
Only towards the end of the 19th century, when the opening up of the
West was completed, the Indians ‘pacified’, and the frontier closed,
156 Arno Heller
did the Romantic preference for wild nature and landscape reach the
mass audiences.
The landscape painters of the so-called Hudson River School gave
the wilderness idea its first visual and artistic expressions. They
painted ‘sublime’ landscapes, untouched by man, usually perceived
from the perspective of tiny human observers hovering on their edges.
Thomas Cole’s famous painting “The Oxbow” (1836), a classic in
American art history, pictorially narrates the clash between the ad-
vancing civilization and wilderness in an exemplary way (see Illustra-
tion 1).
Illustration 1: Thomas Cole, “The Oxbow” (1836)
The viewer looks down into a broad fertile valley with a majestic
river meandering in the sunlight. It forms a strong contrast to a section
of untouched wilderness on the left side of the picture – the top of a
ridge, with splintered tree trunks and storm clouds. In between we
hardly realize the tiny presence of the artist himself. Paintings of this
kind – Asher Durand’s “Kindred Spirits” is another example – were
soon followed by the grandiose landscape canvasses of Frederick E.
Church, Albert Bierstadt or Thomas Moran. Paintings such as
Church’s “Niagara” (1857), Bierstadt’s “The Rocky Mountains”
(1863), or Moran’s “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” (1893)
opened people’s minds to the natural wonders of the West (cf. Novak
1980: 19). Wilderness became a kind of sacred national icon and
metaphor of the frontier myth. It was a very effective ideological con-

struct, idealizing wild nature as an antithesis to the ugly artificiality of
civilization. As William Cronon argues in his book Uncommon
Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, it was also a kind of
self-betrayal, a flight from reality, which was in fact a history of the
conquest and destruction of the natural world (cf. Cronon 1996: 79-
81).
The American nature enthusiasm reached its first literary climax in
Transcendentalism, above all in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emer-
son. His famous essay “Nature” (1836) is a Neo-Platonic celebration
of the divine in nature, transcending it in the direction of religious and
spiritual apotheosis. His vision of man as a “transparent eyeball” tak-
ing in “the currents of the Universal Being” (Emerson 1965: 189) and
by this partaking in God’s design has since become a common topos
in American Romantic literature. Walt Whitman’s great nature poems
in Leaves of Grass, for example “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rock-
ing”, belong to its most impressive manifestations. In narrative fiction
already James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales had made
use of the Western wilderness theme. In The Prairie (1827), the last
work of his saga of the forward moving frontier, Natty Bumppo, or
Leatherstocking, the 80-year-old frontiersman, has lived most of his
adult life in the wilderness, deliberately separating himself from civi-
lized society. But in the end he has become a paradoxical, melan-
choly, and even tragic figure. By putting his skill and knowledge to
the service of the pioneers and settlers, he has paved the way for the
advance of civilization, from which he had tried to escape. At the end
of the novel Leatherstocking appears as a mythical but also ambigu-
ous figure against the sunset of the Western horizon:
[His] figure was colossal; the attitude musing and melancholy, and the situation
directly in the route of the travellers. But imbedded, as it was, in its setting of
garish light, it was impossible to distinguish its just proportions or true character.
(Cooper 1954: 771)
Half a century later Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1884) contributed another national icon to the theme: the verna-
cular white-trash boy Huck Finn, who together with Nigger Jim, the
run-away slave, escapes from a corrupt civilization into wild nature.
Their voyage down the Mississippi River on a raft projects an ex-
tended symbolical clash between river and shore, nature and society,
innocence and experience. The narrative evocation of nature’s beauty,
seen through Huck’s eyes at the beginning of chapter 19 contains the
158 Arno Heller
binary opposition in a nutshell. After the traumatic experience of a

deadly feud between two Southern family clans Huck and Jim cele-
brate the sunrise on the river as a new beginning, and the dead fish on
the shore, killed and carelessly thrown away by human beings, cannot
disturb the idyll:
Not a sound anywheres – perfectly still – just like the whole world was asleep,
only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking
away over the water, was a kind of dull line – that was the woods on t’other side;
you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more pale-
ness spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t [sic] black
any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away
– trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks – rafts; sometimes you
could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled-up voices, it was so still, and sounds
come so far; and by-and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know
by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks
on it and makes the streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the
water, and the east reddens up [...]. Then the nice breeze springs up, and comes
fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of
the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead
fish laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you’ve
got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going
it! (Twain 1985: 117-118)
In the 20th century Ernest Hemingway takes up this theme again in
“Big Two-Hearted River”, the story of a young man who has returned
from his traumatic experience of World War I with a psychic break-
down and seeks regeneration in a fishing trip in the Michigan wilder-
ness. What is striking about the story is that its narrative is almost
totally reduced to accurate descriptions of the river scenery and the
protagonist’s ritualistic activities of fishing and making camp. Ideas
and emotions have been eliminated, although they are subliminally
present between the lines. William Faulkner’s legendary chapter “The
Bear” in his novel Go Down, Moses is another classic story of initia-
tion in the context of nature. The annual bear hunt in the Mississippi
woods, in which Ike McCaslin, a young Southerner, takes part with
his black half Indian mentor Sam Fathers, stands for the ongoing
struggle between nature and civilization. Old Ben, the huge mythical
bear – “phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which
the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence
and fear” (Faulkner 1942: 193-194) – becomes the symbol of a
“doomed wilderness”, which is rapidly destroyed by the advance of
civilization. Soon all wild animals will have disappeared, the forests
will have been cut down by the lumber companies and replaced by
cotton plantations. The turning point is reached when Old Ben is

killed and Ike at the age of 21 as an act of rebellion relinquishes his
family legacy.
More recently Native American novels have revived the nature
theme within an ethnic perspective. Leslie Marmon Silko in her novel
Ceremony (1977) places her descriptions of nature and landscape into
a strictly tribal context. Mountains, rivers, lakes, springs, caves are
holy places, the origin of spiritual life. Each of them has a mythical
history and a timeless dimension. Silko makes ample use of the old
mythic stories, chants and rites handed down in the oral tradition of
the Laguna Pueblo. She embeds them in a modernist structure, creat-
ing a complex network of interrelationships between biographical,
local and transcendental dimensions. The young Indian protagonist
Tayo, who returns to his reservation in the Southwest from the
traumatic experience of World War II, must go through a healing
ceremony, administered by a Navajo shaman, before he can be reinte-
grated into the tribal community. At one of the turning points of the
novel he realizes that the family, the tribe, nature, the whole world are
held together by Spider Woman’s fragile web, whose balance must
not be disturbed:
The air smelled damp and it was cool even after the sun got high enough to shine
into the canyon. The dark orange sandstone formation held springs like this one,
all along the base of the sandstone where wind and erosion had cut narrow can-
yons into the rock. These springs came from deep within the earth, and the people
relied upon them even when the sky was barren and the winds were hot and dusty.
The spider came out first. She drank from the edge of the pool, careful to keep the
delicate egg sacs on her abdomen out of the water. She retracted her path, leaving
faint crisscrossing patterns in the fine yellow sand. He remembered stories about
her. She waited in certain locations for people to come to her for help. She alone
had known how to outsmart the malicious mountain Ka’t’sina who imprisoned the
rain clouds in the northwest room of his magical house. Spider Woman had told
Sun Man how to win the storm clouds back from the Gambler so they would be
free again to bring rain and snow to the people. (Silko 1977: 98-99)
In all these nature narratives, as different as they may be in their his-
torical, geographical, cultural and ethnic settings, nature never func-
tions merely as a background, an aesthetic adornment or simply as an
entity in itself. It always refers to a wider interpretative or argumenta-
tive framework from Manifest Destiny, Transcendentalism or region-
alism to Native American mythology. The texts take possession of
nature by projecting human sentiment, empathy, ideas, values, and re-
160 Arno Heller
ligious traditions onto it. In short, they are always essentially anthro-
pocentric.
3. Descriptive Nature Writing from Thoreau to the Present
In contrast to these fictions there exists still another, very different

non-fictional strain in American literature on nature which delibe-
rately goes beyond the anthropocentric and emblematic. Nature writ-
ing, in this stricter sense, starts out from the essential Otherness of
non-human nature and is sceptical towards all speculations about it. It
puts the emphasis on faithful description avoiding interpretative clo-
sures. In its origins this branch of American literature points back to
the early explorers and nature observers in the New World such as
William Bartram or John Audubon. In contrast to the fictional nar-
ratives and their changing aesthetic and cultural premises they follow
a straightforward, fact-oriented and occasionally scientific diction,
which has prevented them from becoming dated in the course of time.
The earliest and most important representative of this tradition is
Henry David Thoreau. His Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) is
certainly the most widely discussed literary classic in the field. How-
ever, in the specific context of descriptive theory, his lesser known
Journal (1837-61) has a larger relevancy. Thoreau started it at the age
of twenty after leaving Harvard and broke it off 39 years later, in the
year 1861, a few months before his death. It was not published until
1906 (see Harding 1980). It consists of altogether twelve volumes of
field-diaries, filled with accurately described nature observations and
reflexions. Thoreau later exploited much of this material for Walden
and other published books, adding narrative devices and transferring
them into philosophical contexts. Walden is a deliberately composed
book, which compresses years of observation to the timespan of one
year and organizes the material in thematically unified, carefully
thought out essay chapters. But while revising and editing his field
material Thoreau was always painfully aware that he somehow
reduced the descriptive purity of the original. To him the Journal
meant more than a mere ‘savings bank’ or ‘draft book’ for his later
published works; it was a continuous inner record, although it hardly
ever refers to his personal life directly. In the early volumes he still
grapples with ideas from the many books he was reading, but later he
concentrates almost exclusively on nature observation, shaping into
words what he brought home from his extended field walks: detailed
descriptions of landscapes, plants, animals, ponds and rivers, process-
es of flow and fluctuation, the seasons and cycles of nature and how
they relate to one another. In contrast to his published works the or-
ganization of the Journal appears amazingly modern, even postmod-
ern, in places. It is compendious, fragmentary, plotless, and random
(cf. Cameron 1985: 5). Not abstract generalities and philosophical
ideas establish the substance of this monumental project, but the
unmediated and direct recordings of sensory perceptions, sights,
sounds, smells, surfaces, textures and facts. Discontinuity, i. e. the
lack of narrative linearity, is the structural principle of the Journal. It
is not only a result of the typical journal format, but was consciously
cultivated by Thoreau. There is always a division or conceptual blank
between the individual entries, creating a basically additive, non-
developing quality. For Thoreau the integrity of nature description de-
pended on this primary, unstructured context, which was not to be
violated by anthropocentric projections. He was quite conscious of
the uniqueness of his endeavour and in the long run considered the
Journal his most important work: “I do not know where to find in any
literature whether ancient or modern any adequate account of that
Nature with which I am acquainted.” (Thoreau, Journal, vol. 3: 186)
Thoreau’s dislike of the anthropocentric, or what John Ruskin
called the “pathetic fallacy”, i. e. the superimposing of one’s own
intellectual, aesthetic or symbolical order upon what one sees, gives
the Journal a strongly self-referential quality (cf. Cameron: 11-13).
The open descriptive form not only tolerates but even welcomes the
confusions, contradictions and inaccessibilities of the observed natu-
ral phenomena. Closely observed details and their accurate descrip-
tion are self-sufficient and create in themselves intricate meaningful
entities, or as Sharon Cameron puts it:
Descriptions are thoughts; to describe is to think, is what Thoreau calls ‘pure
mind’, for as the mind has been cleared of the preconceptions which occupy it, it
can receive mental pictures, can form mental pictures of the nature that it sees.
(Cameron: 148-149)
The following passage from the Journal can illustrate this in an
exemplary way. It is an accurate description of the thawing of ice on a
sandy slope and the shapes, colours and patterns this produces:
Few phenomena given me more delight in the spring of the year than to observe
the forms which thawing clay and sand assume on flowing down the sides of a
deep cut on the rail road through which I walk.
162 Arno Heller
The clay especially assumes an infinite variety of forms –

There lie the sand and clay all winter on this shelving surface an inert mass but
when the spring sun comes to thaw the ice which binds them they begin to flow
down the bank like lava.
These little streams & ripples of lava like clay over flow & interlace one another
like some mythological vegetation. [...]
It begins to flow & immediately it takes the forms of vines – or of the feet &
claws of animals – or of the human brain or lungs or bowels – Now it is bluish
clay now clay mixed with reddish sand – now pure iron sand – and sand and clay
of every degree of fineness and every shade of color – The whole bank for a
quarter of a mile on both sides is sometimes overlaid with a mass of plump &
sappy verdure of this kind – I am startled probably because it grows so fast – it is
produced in one spring day. The lobe of these leaves – perchance of all leaves – is
a thick–now loitering drop like the ball of the finger larger or smaller so per-
chance the fingers & toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body –
& then are congealed for a night.
–Whither may the sun of new spring lead them on– These roots of ours– In
the mornings these resting streams start again & branch and branch again into a
myriad others– Here it is coarse red sand & even pebbles –there fine adhesive
clay–
–And where the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank on
either side it spreads out flatter in to sands like those formed at the mouths of
rivers–the separate streams losing their semicilindrical form –and gradually grow-
ing more and more flat– and running together as it is more moist till they form an
almost flat sand–variously & beautifully shaded–& in which you can still trace the
forms of vegetation till at length in the water itself they become the ripple marks
on the bottom.
The lobes are the fingers of the leaf as many lobes as it has in so many direc-
tions it inclines to flow–more genial heat or other influences in its springs might
have caused it flow farther.
–So it seemed as if this one hill side contained an epitome of all the opera-
tions in nature.
So the stream is but a leaf. What is the river with all its branches–but a leaf
divested of its pulp– – but its pulp is intervening earth–forests & fields&town&
cities– What is the river but a tree an oak or pine– and its leaves perchance are
ponds&lakes&meadows innumerable as the springs which feed it.
I perceive that there is the same power that made me my brain my lungs my
bowels my fingers & toes working in other clay this very day – I am in the studio
of an artist. (Thoreau, Journal, Vol. 2: 382-383)
As can be clearly seen in this passage, Thoreau’s conception of
natural phenomena differed conspicuously from that of his contempo-
raries. While the artists of the Hudson River School in their landscape
paintings tended to work on large scales searching for the aestheti-
cally sublime and grandiose, Thoreau preferred the limited, close, and
concrete perspective. Moreover, unlike Emerson or the fiction writers
of his time, he refrains from superimposing transcendental or moral

notions on the natural phenomena. He jots down his observations in a
deliberately uncontrolled manner, without punctuation and proper
paragraphs, and with a great number of dashes and the ubiquitous ab-
breviation & connecting or separating words and sentences. The dic-
tion is very much in contrast to Walden, where he goes over the same
material in a discursively condensed narrative way. The transforma-
tion from Journal to Walden, as the following passage can show,
‘civilizes’ the random experimentalism of the original field observa-
tions and makes them accessible to the contemporary reader.
It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows,
using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of the channel.
Such are the sources of the rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits
is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy
fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the
human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent
from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would
expand and flow out under a more genial heaven? (Thoreau 1965: 226-227)
In the Journal Thoreau looks at natural phenomena with the greatest
possible precision, drawing conclusions and comparisons directly
from the observed objects. In the quoted passage the meticulous de-
scription of the thawing sand flow eventually is extended to other
forms of organic life, such as the veins of a leaf, or the arteries and
bronchial tubes in a human body. Nature forms patterns in space and
time, some of them in an orderly, others in a disorderly way. Some
seem to develop structures, others oscillate in ever changing unpre-
dictable shapes. All in all, however, the apparent disorder seems to
correspond to some deeper process of order, a delicate balance be-
tween stability and flux. Thoreau in this passage strikingly anticipates
principles of today’s chaos theory. Like Ilya Prigogine, one of its
foremost spokesmen in his book Order Out of Chaos (1984), Thoreau
conceives of natural processes as random energy flows with intricate
feedback mechanisms and non-linear dynamic motions that eventually
develop into complex organic systems. It was this type of non-fiction
writing – Thoreau’s life-long habit of field observation during his
daily walks, followed by an intensive process of transforming the per-
ceived into verbal pictures – that has had an enormous influence on
nature writers ever since.
With the closing of the frontier, with urbanization and industriali-
zation and the rapid advance of technology, the protection of wild
nature took on an increasing urgency in 20th-century America (cf.
164 Arno Heller
Nash 1973: 141-160). Nature activists of all sorts, ecologists and en-
vironmental scientists as well as writers, artists and photographers
coincided in their struggle to slow down the encroachments of ‘prog-
ress’ and its destructive and diminishing impact on wild lands. One of
the outward results of these activities was the founding of the Ameri-
can National Park System and the protection of large wilderness
areas. Another result was the rich tradition of nature writing and
‘wilderness advocacy’ (cf. Nash 1988: 194-201) that proliferated
along these lines. John Muir, Clarence King, John Burroughs, Mary
Austin, Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner, or Joseph W. Krutch were
some of the important earlier voices, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey,
Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, John Nichols, Gretel Ehrlich, Terry
Temple Williams, Ann Zwinger, Richard Nelson and many others
followed suit more recently. They all agree in their basic assumption
that wilderness is necessary to complement civilized life. In most of
their works the anthropomorphic endeavour of conserving and pre-
serving nature to the benefit of man increasingly gives way to the bio-
centric and ecocentric concept of what has been labeled “deep
ecology” (Devall 1995: 65-70). It replaces the conventional Romantic
and Transcendentalist notions of the sublime by the recognition that
homo sapiens no longer occupies the centre of the cosmos. It signals a
paradigm shift which rejects the idea of wild nature as a source of
recreational, spiritual and artistic inspiration or as an escape from
civilized life. The primary value of wilderness is not that it is beauti-
ful, edifying, or therapeutic, but that it exists as wild as it is. Deep
ecologists are convinced that in the last analysis anthropomorphic
environmentalism has been just another form of cultural colonialism,
reducing primeval nature to something humanly useful or economical-
ly profitable. They regard the non-human quality of nature as an
absolute value in itself. Humankind is defined as an element not
outside but within natural systems discarding the Cartesian and New-
tonian dualism. As logocentrism has obscured the intrinsic value of
the non-human world, the new ecologists demand a ‘democratic’ dia-
logue between man and nature as equal partners. This is why nature
writing shifted its emphasis away from the narrative and interpretative
to the representational and descriptive. Its aim was to dissolve the old
borderlines between science and art, experiential physical existence
and aesthetic representation. By exploring and describing specific
natural localities and landscapes in greatest detail they amazingly
have created descriptive microcosms. It would be a great simplifica-
tion and misunderstanding to refer them simply to the category of re-

gional literature, as so many literati have done. The endeavour of
these works clearly goes beyond the merely local and regional and
takes on a “glocal” significance mediating between the local and the
global (Dirlik 1996: 21-45).
The foremost and most widely read American nature writer is
Edward Abbey. Some of his works, especially his non-fiction book
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968), have become
classics of ecocritical nature writing. Significantly, Abbey was not
born in the Southwest, but came there from the East coast as a young
man to study philosophy at the University of New Mexico in Albu-
querque. During that time he deeply immersed himself in the South-
western desert landscapes and soon became their most adamant ad-
vocate. Desert Solitaire is based on his two-year experience as a
ranger in Arches National Park in Utah. It is a mixed bag of desert
travelogue, autobiographical adventure stories, philosophical and eco-
critical reflexion, but the bulk of the book consists of nature descrip-
tions usually leading to ensuing reflexion processes. One of Abbey’s
recurring questions is why modern man has alienated himself so much
from the natural world. Among other reasons Abbey sees in words
and ideas the greatest cause for today’s spiritual fatigue: “That screen
of words, that veil of ideas, issuing from the brain like a sort of
mental smog that keeps getting between a man and the world,
obscuring vision” (Abbey 1971: 209). He distrusts all perceptions of
reality based exclusively on verbal naming and interpreting:
Through naming comes knowing; we grasp an object, mentally, by giving it a
name [...]. And thus through language [we] create a whole world, corresponding
to the other world out there. Or we trust that it corresponds [...]. We cease to care,
becoming more concerned with the naming than with the things named; the
former becomes more real than the latter. And so in the end the world is lost
again. (Abbey 1971: 288-89)
To Abbey man is no longer the measure of all things, the centre of
meaning and values. Like the poststructuralists he rejects logocen-
trism, but to him the deconstruction of signifying systems is only a
first step. His insistence on paying attention to the non-human, the
world beyond language, provides the foundation of his ecological
engagement and nature writing:
The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is
the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying, or
our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever
to the desert. (Abbey 1971: 301)
166 Arno Heller
Long before the concept of deep ecology entered the mainstream of

environmental thinking Abbey pointed out its main principles. All
natural phenomena, plants, animals, wilderness landscapes have equal
rights. In order to preserve them, the anthropocentric order of things
must give way to a biocentric one.
The snow-covered ground glimmers with a dull blue light, reflecting the sky and
the approaching sunrise. Leading from the narrow dirt road, an alluring and
primitive track into nowhere meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the
labyrinth of naked stone. Near the first group of arches, looming over a bend of
the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal
height: it looks like a head from Easter island, a stone god or petrified ogre.
Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency
I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for
a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to
confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence, the
elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to
look at and into the juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as
it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the
categories of scientific description. [...] I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in
which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives
still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock. (Abbey 1971: 6)
Abbey strongly stimulated a great number of American ecocritical
writers such as Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Ann Zwinger,
and Charles Bowden. But all of them developed characteristic voices
of their own. Williams, for example, in her non-fiction book Refuge
(1991) carefully balances out personal history and the natural history
of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Lopez, in his book Arctic Dreams
(1985), creates a meticulously researched vista of the Arctic world,
and Ann Zwinger takes up the realistic strain of the early explorers
and nature observers. Like them Zwinger approaches nature for its
own sake and avoids the elevation of her own ego. In her book Run,
River Run (1975) she repeats J. W. Powell’s famous 1000-mile river
expedition of 1869 down the Green River, a wild desert stream cut-
ting through the mountain ranges of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.
The progress of the trip and its various stops, the close descriptions of
the river, the rock formations, and the variety of plants in their
ecological niches structure the book. Zwinger is much more scientific
than Abbey and delivers the geology and fauna of the canyons with
great precision. She keeps her emotions on a short rein and only in
rare cases, as after the following description of flowing water, does it
surface in a fleeting glimpse:
When water is constricted into a small channel between rocks, an increase in

velocity, a rise in energy, and a decrease in pressure occur. When the pressure de-
creases to the vapor pressure of water, bubbles form. As water streams through the
constriction and spreads out again, the opposite occurs: velocity decreases, pres-
sure increases again, and the bubbles collapse, giving off shock waves that travel
outward. Building up in series, they make the peculiar soft booming, a Stygian
rhythm that I feel through the ground as well as hear. And all night long the river
murmurs and hums and shudders, but always beneath the louder rushing I hear the
soft little waves at the shore.
I lie awake most of the night, sensitized to the river. Peace, contentment: these
are programmed cultural words; what I feel is the infinity outside culture, and al-
though I sleep little, I wake rested. The dawn sky is pale and pearly, like a moon-
stone, webbed with a few clouds, the jagged skyline just beginning to pick up sun-
light, that beautiful moment before awakening when the world is fresh and clear, a
time of great expectations, and it is completely right, this grey rock canyon, this
cold rock beginning, this beautiful river morning. (Zwinger 1975: 29)
From a literary point of view Charles Bowden is Abbey’s most radical
and artistically most impressive successor. In his works he attacks the
ecological destruction of the Sonoran Desert by the accelerating prog-
ress of industrialization and urbanization. Moreover, he also lashes
out against the wilderness freaks and nature writers who contribute to
turning the wild into a tourist’s commodity. “We have created a kind
of pornography”, he writes, “that fantasizes a natural world which
barely exists any longer and that we do not live in. And this is
dangerous for us and dangerous for the tiny islands of wild ground
that survive” (Bowden 1987: 138-139). Bowden’s non-fiction work
Blue Desert (1986) is a collage of authentic observations, reportages
and ecological reflections, held together by descriptions of the desert
landscape (cf. Porsche 1998: 244-255). Bowden is not a nature
enthusiast like Abbey and there are no romantic notions in his works.
His entropic settings and run-down characters project an end-time
world with interstate highways, gasoline stations, barren military or
industrial wastelands, nightclubs and bars. His first-person narrator
moves with open senses through an apocalyptic world, increasingly
ravaged by excessive agrobusiness, industrialization and urban
sprawl. The book falls into three parts – “Beasts”, “Players” and
“Deserts” – a series of close descriptions interspersed with autobio-
graphical vignettes. The most impressive of them describe the des-
perate struggle of desert tortoises for survival, and a U. S. Air Force
shooting gallery in the desert, which because of its hunting and
grazing restrictions has become a refuge for wild animals. The follow-
168 Arno Heller
ing description of a bat colony to be exterminated by DDT shows the

intensely dystopian quality of Bowden’s nature descriptions:
This is the forbidden place, the dark zone claimed by nightmares. The air can be
rich with rabies and people and animals have died from visiting such places. Up
high, up near the ceiling, the rustling grows louder and louder. They [the bats] are
disturbed as we march into their world. The eye sees blackness but the skin feels
the rustling, the swoosh of something near our brows, our throats, our mouths. We
are enveloped in a swirling mass of energy and we keep walking toward the center
of this biological bomb. [...]
This is the bat cave and 25.000 Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana wrap us with
their anxiety. Night is falling outside the cave. Soon our world will become theirs.
Then they will exit and plunder the canyons, the mesas, the hillsides, the
towns, the fields. They will bring back deadly reports of our world, details buried
deep in their bones and body chemistry.
The sound tightens now, a shrill spike of screeches and squeaks. The mites
scramble across the skin. The larvae writhe like shiny stones at our feet.
We stand inside a brief island of life, a hiding place of our blood skin.
(Bowden 1986: 9-10)
What the three authors have in common is that they always start out
from close descriptions, using detailed nature observations and
sharply drawn sensory impressions to create accurate and lively
verbal pictures of natural objects and their ambience. Sometimes the
descriptive part is followed by some kind of analysis, reflexion or
emotional reaction, with the description itself showing forth the
implied meaning. In contrast to earlier nature writing they follow a
strictly biocentric and deep ecological orientation. They refuse what
they call the ‘shallow’ approach of anthropocentrism to environmen-
tal problems, the continuing dominance of human over non-human
nature. They search for a state of being in which all things in the bio-
sphere have an equal right to exist and their diversity becomes a value
in itself.
4. Nature Description in Poetry and in the Visual Arts
It is not surprising that the ecocentric stance of nature writing has also
found its way into American nature poetry: A. R. Ammons is one of
the most prominent representatives in this context. He radically re-
jects anthropocentric self-assertion and refrains from reducing nature
to a mere object of projection, reflexion, let alone mystical union. In
search of the self-identity of natural things the lyric I in his poetry
enters into an emphatic dialogue with nature, in which its total other-
ness is respected (cf. Grabher 1989: 142-145). In his programmatic

poem “Nature Poetry” Ammons calls in question the idea of ‘mes-
sages’: nature has messages in store – however unpredictable, ran-
dom, oscillating –, but they are “sent to no one”. Only by “irrele-
vantly” opening up to them through close observation may one
verbalize them without any intention. Ammon’s nature poems are
tentatively open, free-floating, and widely descriptive. They are not
about but by nature, which is supposed to speak in a poetic language
of its own.
Nature Poetry
If no one sends you
messages to read, none
you can read
(so you have no
replies to shape)
still you may irrelevantly read
messages sent to
no one, light shaking
off a poplar leaf
(like seen wind chipped free)
or breaking into
threads
of bright-backed water
in brookstone shallows
terse
messages, though
not sent to you and
requiring no response
may nevertheless be
taken
down in strict
observances (like studied regard)
as if to be nearly adequate
messages to no one.
(Ammons 1983: 13)
In the poem “Corsons Inlet” the lyric persona walks over sand dunes
to a seashore and later recollects the transition from thought to pure
sight, which he has experienced during that walk. The poem alternates
between the description of what the poet sees and the constant self-
admonishment not to draw any defining conclusions from the seen.
Nature is described as a dynamic flux – the back and forth of sand
dune and waterline, birds feeding themselves on a mussel bank, and a
170 Arno Heller
swarm of swallows gathering for a long flight in the fall. Comparable

to Thoreau’s description of the thawing sand, nature is rendered as
driven by random energies in the direction of some larger unknown,
unpredictable process:
manifold events of sand
change the dune’s shape that will not be the same shape
tomorrow,
so I am willing to go along, to accept
the becoming
thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends, establish
no walls:
by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek
to undercreek: but there are no lines: but “sharpness” spread out,
allowed to occur over a wider range
than mental lines can keep;
the moon was full last night: Today, low tide was low:
black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk
of air
and, earlier, of sun.
waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,
caught always in the event of change:
a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals
and ate
to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,
picked out the entrails, swallowed the softshelled legs, a ruddy
turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits. [...]
thousands of tree swallows
gathering for flight:
an order held
in constant change: a congregation
rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable
as one event
not chaos: preparations for
flight from winter. [...]
I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will
not run to that easy victory:
still around the looser, wider forces work:
I will try
to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening
scope, but enjoying the freedom that
Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing completely,
that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.
(Ammons 1965: 6-8)
The descriptor resists summarizing or explaining the significance or

meaning of the described. He refuses to engage in conclusions about
the perceived natural phenomena, as it would take him away from the
physical immediacy of sight. Mere sight is more liberating and
valuable than the contemplation of precepts. The dynamic processes
of formless flow, described in the poem, forbid the construction of
boundaries of thought, aesthetic rules, or philosophical reductions.
The shapes and rhythms of the natural events correspond to the ir-
regular lines of the poem as well as to the experiential contours of the
walk. The rambling gait of the walker, the ever shifting shapes of
water and sand are like a mind in motion. There are no sharp and
straight lines in the fractal geometry of non-human nature, as – ac-
cording to the poet – they should not be in human consciousness
either. As there exists no totalizing “scope” of causal or teleological
order for the poet, he rules out the superimposing of cognitive
categories at the cost of openness.
It is interesting to note in this context that the deliberate resistance
to interpretative reductions does not only occur in written texts, but
also in the visual arts. The work of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of Amer-
ica’s most prominent landscape artists, can serve as an example. In
the 1920s she moved from New York to the American Southwest.
Overwhelmed by the luminous desert landscape of New Mexico she
dedicated her life as an artist to its depiction. What is striking about
her pictures is that ‘reception figures’ or all other traces of human life
have been banned from them. O’Keeffe approaches landscape as if
seen through a wide-angle lens or zoom, a technique she learned from
the landscape photographer Ansel Adams. There is no foreground or
background, no hint of any kind of impressionistic atmosphere or
temporality. Her spatial motifs completely fill the entire format of her
paintings. They are monumental depictions of mountains, deserts and
animal bones, accurately perceived. It is a strongly reductive and
static world of colour and form that only on close scrutiny may reveal
hidden human idiosyncrasies. For example, the crevices, cracks and
cavities of the depicted rock structure in “Black Place I” (1944) have
been interpreted as subliminal sexual connotations of the female body
or of a feminine emotional deep-structure (see Illustration 2).
O’Keeffe, on her part, strictly rejected verbalizations, explanations
and interpretations of this kind (cf. Eldredge 1981: 116).
172 Arno Heller
Illustration 2: Georgia O’Keeffe, “Black Place I” (1944)
The direct approach to a perceived natural surface and its accurate

representation was all she endeavored to achieve. She took it for
granted that this was a subjective rather than an objective realization,
but any narrative analysis of her art she found banal and superfluous.
Another example of a radically descriptive realization of nature
can be found in film. The concept of cinema verité or direct cinema
strikingly corresponds to the descriptive concept in literature (see
Mamber 1974). Films of this kind, documentaries in most cases, strive
for absolute representational authenticity and refuse obtrusive narra-
tive manipulations of the filmed material. Prearranged scripts, linear
structures, plots, characters, commentaries, voice-overs or dialogues
are avoided in them. The footage is edited, i. e. cut and montaged in a
way that it speaks for itself without overt intrusion on the part of the
filmmaker. As a rule, they deal with human, social and political mat-
ters and only in rare cases with nature. One remarkable exception is
Godfrey Reggio’s nature documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1983) (= a
Hopi word for ‘life out of balance’). Without narrative commentary
the film relies entirely on camera work, editing, and music. Its under-
lying issue, the ongoing disintegration of natural life in today’s tech-
nological world, is achieved through editing techniques, rhythm,
acoustic and pictorial montages. In the course of the film the slow-
moving depiction of the pristine Southwestern desert landscape gives
way to accelerating fast-motion photography of planted fields,

highways, dynamite explosions, bulldozers, dams, power lines,
overcrowded city freeways, shopping malls, cars, conveyor belts, and
atomic explosions, until at the end spaceship earth bursts into a
fireball with pieces of debris tumbling down to the ground: homo
sapiens at the end of his tether. Koyaanisqatsi stresses the artistic
potential of the descriptive although, on close scrutiny, it also amply
employs diegetic film devices. With its conscious restraint of storifi-
cation and interpretative intrusion, however, it represents an exciting
new form of documentary film: in a world of simulacra and simula-
tions, of over-information and manipulation, of propaganda, logocen-
tric reductions, and the inflation of words, the film stands for a new
artistic purity.
5. Conclusion
The concept of the descriptive, as the above examples have tried to

show, has indeed become an important trend in contemporary Amer-
ican nature writing, including its poetic and filmic equivalents. Al-
though there exist hardly any pure and uncontaminated examples, be-
cause descriptive and narrative elements intermingle in most cases,
the works discussed express a desire to move away from anthropocen-
tric narration. The main characteristics of this kind of nature writing
has become the striving for an essentially ecocentric state of being,
deconstructing the myth of man’s separateness from the natural
world. It can be seen as a kind of ecocritical fundamentalism celebrat-
ing the rights of the non-human Other.
As the selected examples have shown, this tendency expresses
itself not only in theme but primarily in form. The gestalt of these
non-fictional texts, poems, paintings or films presents in itself a cri-
tique of homocentrism. Lawrence Buell has coined the term “aesthet-
ics of relinquishment” in this connection, by which he means the dis-
carding of the illusionary human hegemony vis-à-vis the non-human
world (Buell 1995: 168-179). There are several ways by which “relin-
quishment” is achieved: first of all by the pushing back of storifica-
tion and narration, character configurations, plot and structural
closure in favour of the randomly descriptive. Description in these
texts has ceased to function as a sub-dominant frame in the service of
some larger macro-text. In its concentration on sensory surfaces it
174 Arno Heller
assumes a dominant existence of its own. The search for simplicity,

authenticity, immediacy, and sensual awareness replaces intellectual,
ideological and social precepts. Texts or visualisations of this kind
invite the reader or viewer to re-experience the described intensely
and in his or her own way. Their ultimate intention is to avoid the
illusionary and reductive superimposing of order on the intrinsic self-
identity of the natural things presented. The retreat of the old-
established binary oppositions of the external and the internal, the
referential and the expressive, the objective and the subjective, so it
seems, allows the descriptive to assume new intellectual, cultural, and
aesthetic functions.
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— (1983). Lake Effect County: Poems. New York, NY: Norton.
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Washington, DC: Island Press.
The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’?
Doris Mader
This paper seeks to add new perspectives to the analysis and appreciation of
audioliterature, a genre that is habitually marginalized in ‘Eng.Lit.’ scholarship
and that, even after the ‘intermedial turn’, has hitherto been equally ignored by
those engaged in intermedial studies. As part of a volume devoted to description
in literature and other media, the following pages first investigate the relevance
and scope of descriptions within audioliterature in general, setting the genre apart
from, but also relating it to, other (literary) genres and media; by referring to
‘high-brow’ as well as to more ‘popular’ examples of radiotexts, this paper
furthermore attempts to scrutinize not only the descriptive potential of audio-/
radioliterature, but also to identify specific forms and functions of the descriptive
within the genre chosen. Thus, this survey contributes to the understanding of the
relevance of the macro-mode of description within a ‘(re)discovered’ intermedial
genre only lately retrieved from near-oblivion in the context of ‘drama’. By inves-
tigating audioliterature within the more general context of intermediality, this
essay also endeavours to provide a more comprehensive understanding of, and
offers specific tools for the analysis and interpretation of, a genre that has only
recently come to be focussed on as part of intermedial studies.
1. Introduction
Audioliterature as an intermedial genre in its own right has been

underprivileged both within literary studies and intermedial studies.
Therefore, some preliminary statements, definitions and clarifications
are in place. Before raising the more detailed questions of forms and
functions of the descriptive in audioliterature, we first need to define
the chosen medium audioliterature in the context of literature and the
other media and then position it within the macro-modes of the
‘narrative’ vs. the ‘descriptive’. To establish the forms and functions
of the descriptive in audioliterature, we need to consider the nature
and quality of audioliterature, individual audioliterary artefacts as
well as specific descriptive parts within selected artefacts. Therefore,
this paper will proceed from the more general to the more specific and
conclude by summarizing why and in which way the discourse of
audioliterary artefacts in some parts is organized in terms of the de-
180 Doris Mader
scriptive. Moreover, embedding the analysis and discussion of audio-

literature within the wider context of the cognitive frames of the
‘narrative’ vs. the ‘descriptive’ on the one hand and (intermedial) ‘lit-
erary’ genres on the other hand, this paper likewise seeks to contrib-
ute to the understanding of the macro-mode of the descriptive as
much as to add to a better recognition of a hitherto marginalized sub-
genre of literature.
Since audioliterary artefacts are by definition either tied to, or
originate from, the technical medium radio, readers unfamiliar with
the highly evocative visual imagery of radio artefacts might suspect
that a ‘blind date’ awaits them. With audioliterature, a medium is
placed at the centre of discussion which is not only occasionally
associated with ‘blindness’, but frequently outright declared to be a
‘blind medium’1. Also, editorial as well as copyright reasons do not
allow for any ‘audio illustrations’ to be provided, so that even with
audio examples referred to in this paper it will sometimes be neces-
sary to resort to ‘description’ as well as ‘transcription’ for demonstra-
tion.
2. The Nature and Quality of Audioliterature
2.1. A Definition of Audioliterature as a ‘Literary’ Genre: The War of

the Worlds
In order to illustrate the nature and quality of audioliterature, we can
look into (the soundscript of) the initial sequences of The War of the
Worlds (1938) by Orson Welles, one of the most famous, and prob-
ably the most notorious, of all audio artefacts to date (recently made
into a major film by Steven Spielberg). This radio broadcast occupies
an important position in the history of radioliterature, and is in fact
the radio adaptation of H. G. Welles’s 1897 novel of the same title
that was adapted for the radio by Howard Koch. The War of the
Worlds is widely regarded as one of the “landmarks” (Crook 1999:
24) in the history of radio and in the history of radioliterature. Its
fame mainly rests on the fact that while it was meant to be just a
Hallowe’en radio show it provoked a wave of panic with listeners
1
The late Martin Esslin, Head of BBC Radio Drama between 1963 and 1977, im-
pressively dismissed the idea of radio as a ‘blind’ medium and referred to Marshal
McLuhan’s classification of radio as indeed a visual medium (see Esslin 1971: 5).
The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’? 181
tuning in too late to grasp the fictional frame. Certainly, neither Orson
Welles nor anyone else from the Mercury Theatre had in any way
anticipated the hysterical reactions their broadcast would cause. The
fictional story, namely that of Martians invading the earth with their
space-ships landing in New Jersey, is presented in the form of a series
of ‘live’ broadcasts, ‘interviews’ and ‘eye witness’ reports that are
embedded in the frame of a light entertainment programme, a combi-
nation which undoubtedly contributed to the effet de réel throwing
thousands of Americans into a state of panic.
Immediately following the announcement and the opening credits
the listeners hear Orson Welles as narrator saying: “On this particular
evening, October 30th, the Crossley service estimated that thirty-two
million people were listening in on radios”2, which mirrors the actual
broadcast reception on October 30th in 1938. The following ‘quota-
tions’ provided are my own audio transcripts from the recent audio
book edition of the original production3.
Music
[Announcer:] The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliate stations present
Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the air in The War of the Worlds by H.
G. Welles.
Music [from Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto in B flat minor]
[fade-out]
[Announcer:] Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theatre, and the
star of this broadcast, Orson Welles ...
[Orson Welles:] We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this
world was being watched closely by intelligencies greater than man’s, and yet as
mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about
their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as nar-
rowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that
swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to
and fro the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion
over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design
man has inherited out of the dark mystery of time and space. Yet across an
immense ethereal gulf minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the
jungle, intellects, vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious
eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of
the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. Near the end of October,
businesses bettered, the war scare was over, more men were back at work, sales
2
Quoted from Faulstich 1981: 18. Subsequent quotations from The War of the
Worlds are taken from my own audio transcript. Full transcripts that vary in detail and
deviate slightly from this transcript are available online, e. g. Miller 2006.
3
See – or, rather, listen to – DerHörVerlag, ed. (1996).
182 Doris Mader
were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley Service
estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios.
[fade-in]
[Weather forecast:] ... for the next twenty-four hours not much change in tempera-
ture. A slight atmospheric disturbance of undetermined origin is reported over
Nova Scotia, causing a low pressure area to move down rather rapidly over the
north-eastern states, bringing a forecast of rain, accompanied by winds of light
gale force. Maximum temperatures 66, minimum 48. This weather report comes to
you from the Government Weather Bureau.
We take you now to the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown
New York where you’ll be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his
orchestra.
Dance music
[cross-fade]
[Announcer:] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. From the Meridian Room in
the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramon
Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish, Ramon Raquello leads
off with ‘La Cumparsita’.
Dance music
[quick fade-out]
[Announcer:] Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our programme of dance music
to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty
minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennins Observ-
atory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas,
occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the
gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity.
Professor Pierson at the observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell’s observation,
and describes the phenomenon as – quote – like a jet of blue flame shot from a
gun – unquote. We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello, playing for
you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New
York.
[fade-in]
Dance music
[applause]
[Announcer:] And now a tune that never loses favour, the ever-popular ‘Stardust’.
Ramon Raquello ...
[cross-fade]
Dance music
[fade-out]
[Announcer:] Ladies and gentlemen, following on the news given in our bulletin a
moment ago, the Government Meteorological Bureau has requested the large
observatories of the country to keep an astronomical watch on any further distur-
bances occurring on the planet Mars. Due to the unusual nature of this occur-
rence, we have arranged an interview with the noted astronomer, Professor
Pierson, who will give us his views on this event. In a few moments, we will take
you to the Princeton Observatory at Princeton, New Jersey. We return you until
then to the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.
[fade-in]
Dance music
[music interrupted]
[Announcer:] We are ready now to take you to the Princeton Observatory at
Princeton, where Carl Phillips, our commentator, will interview Professor Richard
Pierson, famous astronomer. We take you now to Princeton, New Jersey.
[Phillips:] [over the sound of a clock ticking] Good evening, ladies and gentle-
men. This is Carl Phillips speaking to you from the observatory at Princeton,
standing in a large semi-circular room pitch-black except for an oblong split on
the ceiling. Through this opening I can see a sprinkling of the stars that cast a kind
of frosty glow over the intricate mechanism of the huge telescope. The ticking
sounds you hear are the vibrations of the clockwork. Professor Pierson stands
directly above me on a small platform peering through the giant frame. I ask you
to be patient, ladies and gentlemen, during any delays that may arise during our
interview. Besides the ceaseless watch of the heavens, Professor Pierson may be
interrupted by telephone or other communication. During this period, he is in
constant touch with the astronomical centres of the world. [My transcript]
This audio example, apart from illustrating the extraordinary evoca-

tive potential of the medium radio, in fact also provides us with the
ingredients needed to define ‘audioliterature’: audioliterary texts are
specifically composed radiophonic or audio artefacts communicating
solely by means of acoustic signifiers, usually belonging to several
different codes: verbal language (which dominates here), noises (ap-
plause, the ticking of the clockwork), sound effects (distortions,
echoes, and other effects), music (dance music) as well as silence
(which will be of growing importance in the course of the broadcast)
and/or pauses (more or less replaced here by various forms of fade-in,
fade-out and cross-fade)4. This multimediality is a regular feature of
the genre ‘audiotext’, which, however, typically combines a multitude
of codes, to foreground the verbal code (see Mader 2003: 4). In other
words, audioliterature prototypically offers various forms of combina-
tions of distinct media or distinct codes. The term ‘audioliterature’
serves as an umbrella term for various forms of broadcasts that are
quite heterogeneous with regard to sub-mode and the question of
mediacy or immediacy as their discursive modes. The term covers a
multitude of audio and radiophonic literary forms and does not yet
4
Pauses and silences are to be distinguished from each other because a verbal
pause need not be a total silence; when several codes are used simultaneously, the
deletion of one of the codes – not necessarily the verbal one – results in some sort of
pause, e. g. a background noise dies down while at the same time the conversation
continues, etc.
184 Doris Mader
anticipate any genre specifications inherent in the well-known, albeit

often misleading conventional labels5.
2.2. The Basic Iconic Mimesis Concept in the Context of

(Audio)literary Artefacts
The signs exclusively used in audioliterature are acoustic signs, which
are employed in the function of what Martin Esslin (referring to
theatrical signs) called the “basic iconic mimesis” (1987: 43), which
is typical of audioliterary artefacts in that they create fictitious worlds
also by means of ‘aural mimicry’ of an ‘as-if’ version of the world6.
Esslin’s generalisation of the iconic mimesis, however, is only partly
helpful in exploring the category of the descriptive in audioliterature.
It is, therefore, advisable to go beyond the basic ‘aural mimicry’ con-
cept that is so typical of the relegation of audioliterature to the status
of a ‘lesser theatre’, a theatre, as it were, ‘behind a closed curtain’.
Within such an aesthetic concept, the one and only function of the
descriptive in audio artefacts that suggests itself is that of compensat-
ing for the ‘lack’ of visual information. Such a basic iconic mimesis,
according to Esslin, is supposed to be the main function of signs also
on stage, TV, and screen. This idea of the signs iconicising real signs
only helps us, however, to grasp the ‘as if’ quality inherent in all
(audio)literary works, and here I propose to include the epic mode as
well as the lyric mode. Within such a generalized frame of iconicity,
language itself, imitating ‘real’ language, is iconic of someone ver-
bally and non-verbally interacting now (the dramatic mode) or some-
one now saying something about what has already happened (the epic
mode) or iconic of someone enunciating something in the imaginative
here and now (the lyric mode).
5
The English term ‘radio drama’ and even more so its German counterpart ‘Hör-
spiel’ are reductive in that they invariably denote the ‘dramatic’, and are hence
generically inadequate; moreover, both terms seem to connote somewhat outdated
literary forms (see Mader 2002: 40-43).
6
See section 1.6 below on “Audioliterature as Informed by the Macro-Mode ‘Nar-
rative’”.
2.3. Audioliterature and its Medium Radio

The medium radio has been closely related to literature and fictional
stories ever since it was invented, and a lot could be said about this
interrelationship and the medium’s role since the 1920s in a) simply
transmitting, b) originating, and c) adapting literary artefacts7. The
radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a case in point for the
adaptational function of radio8, and however exceptional this broad-
cast’s reception was – quite a number of panic-stricken people, over-
whelmed by such ‘eye-witness accounts’9, had to be treated for shock
–, it also serves to illustrate the hugely evocative power of the
medium radio10 in general and its ‘literary’ genre audioliterature in
7
Apart from serving other purposes, from the 1920s onwards radio has also been
used as a ‘literary’ medium. Its very first and original function in the context of litera-
ture was that of a ‘medium’ in the sense of transmitting and ‘mediating’ theatre per-
formances or readings of plays and other texts. Its second literary function dates back
to 1924, at least for the United Kingdom, when the first ever aired radio play, A
Comedy of Danger, written by Richard Hughes, was produced in a live transmission.
It was the first in a line of thousands of British works of genuine radioliterature, that
is, ‘literary’ works specifically written for the medium radio, an “acoustical literature,
a body of creative material [...] distinct from creative expression in film, television,
and print” (Cory 1974: vii). Quite frequently, the medium, since its birth as a cultural
mediator, has also featured literary texts of a different generic origin in the form of
adaptations. This adaptational function, which is the third major ‘literary’ function of
radio, is a ‘mediating’ one in every sense of the term: here the medium radio and its
medium-specific signifiers are employed in order to ‘translate’ a literary artefact
(novel, play) originating from a different medium (print, stage) and to transfer its
fictional story into the terms of its own devices. This process can, therefore, be called
a case of intermedial transposition in the sense of content-transference.
8
It is perhaps noteworthy in this context that radio created the first ‘global village’:
“Here is an inspiring definition of the first electronic global village: it was radio. Arn-
heim mentions that 40 million sets were scattered around the world in 1936. In 1996
it was estimated that 40 million computer users were connected to the Internet [which
is now also a major source of radio programmes globally]. In sixty years the global
village was transmogrified into a multidimensional nexus of world media.” (Crook
1999: 9)
9
The very technique of simultaneous reports used resembles the dramatic technique
of teichoscopy – a synchronous ‘report’ of what one character perceives or witnesses
from a ‘privileged’ viewpoint, but what is not or cannot be conveyed otherwise.
10
“McLuhan has classified radio as a ‘hot’ medium. A hot medium is that which has
high definition for senses and gives a lot of information with little to do. He is right in
the sense that only the ear as a sense is engaged. But I believe he may well be wrong
in the limit he places on the participation of the listener as audience.” (Crook 1999: 9)
186 Doris Mader
particular11. Independently of the radio’s employment either as a)

mediator, b) originator, or c) transmediator, audioliterary artefacts
share their intermedial quality. Having distinguished between the
three basic media-specific functions of radio in the context of audio-
literary artefacts, we now need to return to the specific conditions that
govern the reception of audioliterature.
2.4. Audioliterature as an Ephemeral Medium

Unlike that of printed literature or other cultural media, the typical
reception of audio- and radioliterature depends on listening once, and
only once. And because we cannot turn pages nor usually ‘rewind’ a
tape in audioliterature, we have to rely on understanding at once,
which of course puts a rather high demand on both producers and lis-
teners. Listeners are therefore assisted by good radio writers with a
careful selection and combination of the acoustic signifiers on offer.
Instead of using a torrent of sounds and words, authors have to econo-
mize and restrict themselves to a few, but significant sounds. More-
over, audiotexts should not last for much more than an hour lest they
lose their audiences. So the medium (with its radio waves) provides
acoustic signifiers that are not only temporal, but also ephemeral. It is
undoubtedly due to this ephemeral nature of radioliterary artefacts
that the genre has elicited little scholarly attention – a circumstance
epitomized in the following statement by Elissa S. Guralnick, one of
the few scholars devoted to the study of ‘radio plays’:
[T]he distinguishing feature of plays conceived for radio, that we do not see them,
is true not only literally, but also metaphorically. Unlikely to be noticed in
reviews or in scholarship, even less likely to be published [...] radio plays ghost
away on the airwaves, leaving behind not a trace of their existence. (Guralnick
1996: ix)
Apart from deploring how little critical attention radioliterature re-
ceives, Guralnick points towards its ephemeral quality on immediate
reception, which is an important aspect also for the question of the de-
scriptive in audioliterature. (She also, of course, laments the fact that
11
Radiophony was first used for entertainment purposes in the trenches of WWI to
boost the soldiers’ morale, with music as the preferred content. Also, the use of the
technical medium radio for fictitious (‘live’ reports on the war against the Martians in
our first example) alias real war correspondence reminds us of the fact that, as is the
case with so many other technical developments, also radio waves as such and radio
telephony were originally developed for strategic and warfare purposes.
hardly any of the broadcasts are preserved in forms available to the

public or to scholars, which is, indeed, a real gravamen.)
Typologically, the genre audioliterature can be said to be strongly
determined by the transient nature of the medium radio. Therefore, as
concerns the type of medium, audioliterature is a temporal medium
which organizes its signifiers along a temporal continuum. The signi-
fiers used are sounds or sound chains which belong to the class of
dynamic signs. The acoustic signifiers employed are combined either
consecutively and/or simultaneously. Once the classical radioliterary
‘text’ has passed the production studio, this temporal succession of
acoustic signifiers, the discourse, is strictly predetermined second per
second and, as a broadcast, tape or CD, constitutes a ready-made
product.
2.5. An Intermedial Definition of Audioliterature

Returning to the essential nature of audioliterature, we can now offer
an intermedial understanding of the genre under scrutiny. We can,
thus, assign this transient genre a position within the context of both
literary and intermedial studies. Any one of an audio artefact’s care-
fully planned segments features one, several, or a combination of the
following acoustic signals: verbal language, non-verbal sound effects
(by human voices or other sources), music, pauses and silence. This
varying combination of acoustic signifiers also determines the inter-
medial quality of audioliterature. The term ‘audioliterature’ thus
signifies “an artefact that, strictly speaking, is an ‘internal intermedial
composite medium’, or, if one prefers to use the term ‘medium’ exclu-
sively for the technical medium radio, an ‘internal intermedial com-
posite genre’” (Mader 2003: 4-5). ‘Internal’ means that within each
individual artefact these phenomena can be observed. ‘Intermedial’,
once again, refers to the different distinct media or component codes
combined within such a ‘composite’ artefact. Moreover, because
those components and the way they are combined give audioliterature
a distinct character of its own, it is justifiable to regard audioliterature
as a separate (sub)genre within the system of literature.
188 Doris Mader
2.6. Audioliterature as Informed by the Basic Semiotic Macro-Mode

‘Narrative’
Apart from our intermedial understanding of audioliterature, this gen-
re can also be semiotically classified as being informed by the macro-
mode of narration because audioliterature is basically a story-telling
medium. Audioliterature in its characteristic manifestations, in fact,
belongs to the semiotic macro-mode of narration, as the unity of any
typical audioliterary artefact is derived from a story. Strictly speaking,
this applies to all ‘dramatic’ texts, too, even if the medium chosen to
convey the story is the theatre stage. Further, this unifying principle
of audioliterature, as of other story-telling media, is prototypically
based on such a fictional or at least fictionalised story. The labels
‘radio drama’ and ‘Hörspiel’ have their own history, and institutions
such as the BBC use ‘radio drama’ as a sort of brand name. However,
from a scholarly perspective, we need to remain aware of the basic
macro-mode of narration that governs and informs audio/radio
artefacts conveying stories, so the term ‘narration’ here serves to
cover a multitude of generic variations which consist in choosing
either mimesis (the mode of showing) or diegesis (the mode of tell-
ing) or combining both in variable ratios. So even if in many audio-
literary artefacts the dramatic sub-mode predominates, the overall
macro-mode ‘narrative’12 nevertheless always applies.
3. The Descriptive in Audioliterature
3.1. Towards an Understanding of the Descriptive in Audioliterature

We will now move closer towards the descriptive in audioliterature by
once more referring to Welles’s The War of the Worlds. Immediately
after the introductory segments, which are highly descriptive in them-
selves, listeners hear an interview with Professor Pierson, who cannot
really account for the strange things going on on the surface of Mars:
12
If the well-known distinction between narrative mediacy and dramatic immediacy
is applied, the difference as to the representation of story is that, e. g., in narrative fic-
tion past events are (re)presented in the here and now of the text, whereas in drama
events are prototypically delivered both as and in the here and now of immediate
presentation. In contrast to the literary genre of drama, which is predominantly in-
formed by the dramatic sub-mode of ‘showing’, no such general predominance can be
claimed for the epitome of the narrative genre, the novel.
[Phillips:] Professor, would you please tell our radio audience exactly what you
see as you observe the planet Mars through your telescope?
[Pierson:] Nothing unusual at the moment, Mr. Phillips. A red disk swimming in a
blue sea. Transverse stripes across the disk. Quite distinct now, because Mars
happens to be at the point nearest the earth – in opposition, as we call it.
[Phillips:] In your opinion, what do these transverse stripes signify, Professor?
[Pierson:] Not canals, I can assure you, Mr. Phillips.
[Phillips:] I see.
[Pierson:] Although that’s the popular conjecture of those who imagine Mars to
be inhabited. From a scientific viewpoint, the stripes are merely the result of
atmospheric conditions peculiar to the planet.
[...]
[Phillips:] How do you account for these gas eruptions occurring on the surface of
the planet at regular intervals?
[Pierson:] Mr. Phillips, I cannot account for them. [My transcript]
Description plays a vital part here in establishing the ‘truth’ of his

observations, for later on in the broadcast, reports will continue to
concentrate on the unbelievable, namely the Martian spaceship di-
vulging monsters crawling out, attacking and killing people. In the
following example, ‘reporter’ Carl Phillips can be heard describing
the first landed Martian spaceship:
[Phillips:] Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever
witnessed – wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top. Someone
or – something. I can see – peering out of that black hole two luminous disks –
are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be ... Good heavens, something’s wrig-
gling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one and another one
and another one. They look like – tentacles to me. There I can see the thing’s
body. It’s large – it’s large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But the face. It, it
– it’s indescribable I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are
black and they gleam like a – serpent. The mouth is – a kind of V-shaped with
saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to – oh quiver and pulsate. The
monster or whatever it is can hardly move. It seems – weighed down by – eh,
possibly gravity or something. The thing’s rising up and now, and the crowd falls
back. They’ve – seen enough. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can’t
find words ... I am pulling this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop
description until I’ve taken a new position. Hold on, will you please. I’ll right be
back in a minute. [My transcript]
This is one in a series of repeatedly interrupted ‘eye-witness’ reports

including a high proportion of descriptions, both of ‘static’ objects
(the Martian monsters in their outer appearance) as well as of ‘dy-
namic objects’ (their crawling out and rising).
190 Doris Mader
3.2. Story and Discourse in Audioliterature

Although it does not suffice to treat audio stories in the same way as
stories conveyed in narrative fiction, we can still make use of the
overall distinction between story – what is represented or told – and
discourse – how the story is presented. Thus, we can narrow our focus
on the building blocks of an audio narrative, viz. the so-called exis-
tents, categorized into characters, spatial and temporal settings, and
events (to be further subdivided into what is done by characters, viz.
actions, and what happens to them, i. e., happenings). This is a neces-
sary step towards investigating the contribution of the descriptive in
audioliterature, namely to include the main elements of the level of
story and set them off against the level of discourse.
Since descriptivity is very much a matter of presentation and trans-
mission (and much more content-indifferent than narrativity, see the
introduction to this volume: 28), discourse is the more relevant focus
of attention and therefore has to be addressed in a more detailed man-
ner. For the majority of audiotexts, the relevance of language is self-
evident, so the prototypical predominance of the verbal remains indis-
putable13.
3.3. The Constellation of Codes and the Configuration of Codes in

Audioliterature
The characteristic discourse of audioliterature, though, needs some
further specifications: audioliterary artefacts do not only participate in
various other codes, but also vary the degrees to which certain codes
are used in given segments – similar to a symphony where the combi-
nation of different instrumental voices varies from section to section.
For analysis, therefore, the discourse level of audioliterary products
can be read like a score. Unlike in instrumental music, however,
where the different ‘voices’ belong but to one musical code, in audio-
literature the different ‘voices’, alias sound signals, belong to dif-
13
Exceptions to this rule are to be found in highly experimental audiotexts, like, e.
g., those of the Neues Deutsches Hörspiel of the late 1960s and 1970s – experiments
that radically undermine both the story-telling and the mimetic functions of con-
ventional radioliterature. Coincidentally, it was a Graz scholar, Friedrich Knilli, who
developed a much-disputed aesthetic theory concerning an ‘acoustical art form’,
which he preferred to call a ‘totales Schallspiel’ (see Knilli 1961 and also Cory 1974:
passim).
ferent codes combined alternately or simultaneously14. Therefore, for

each individual artefact there is, on the level of discourse, a certain
constellation of codes (the number and types of codes used), and for
every single segment under scrutiny there is a specific configuration
of codes: the number and different types of codes used within this
particular segment. Different segments are therefore distinguishable
not only by changes in the configuration of voices, but also by
changes in the number or types of codes employed. These alterations
serve to segmentalize audiotexts as well as to create variations and
rhythm. Furthermore, since audioliterary texts usually last for less
than one hour, they have to assist fairly quickly and economically
their recipients in imagining and visualizing the fictitious worlds by a
carefully selected choice of acoustic signs15.
3.4. Criteria for Analysing the Descriptive in Audioliterature

In order to investigate the descriptive as a category in audioliterature,
we need to draw on the general considerations (see Wolf’s intro-
duction to this volume) concerning the predominant or typical nature
of audioliterary signs as well as the relation between description and
narration within this medium. Furthermore, the descriptive potential
of the medium focussed and the recipient’s share in creating a fic-
tional world will be taken into consideration. Applying these gener-
al considerations to the analysis of a typical sample audiotext will
enable us to determine in how far the frame ‘descriptive’ is applicable
to the medium in the first place and to delineate the typical forms and
functions of descriptions in the given medium ‘audioliterature’.
14
Unlike the scores of a piece of orchestral music, the production scripts of audio
stories, unfortunately, are hardly ever available. Scholars have either got to restrict
themselves to the few published texts (but less than 1% of all literary audiotexts ever
appear in printed form, and, if at all, those printed versions differ immensely from a
proper soundscript) and thus cover only a marginal number of ‘canonized’ products.
Alternatively, scholars, who are rarely so lucky as to be able to lay hands on produc-
tion scripts, can resort to writing sound transcripts for themselves.
15
The potential simultaneity of those various acoustic signifiers requires an ap-
proach quite different from that to, e. g., painting or purely instrumental music, but
overlaps with musico-literary genres (e. g. the pop song, the Kunstlied, and the opera).
192 Doris Mader
3.4.1. The Predominant or Typical Nature of Audioliterary Signs –

Quantitative Versus Qualitative Hierarchy
As far as the predominant or typical nature of audioliterary signs is
concerned, audioliterature is informed by a typical hierarchy of codes.
I find helpful two distinctions along the lines of quantity and of
quality (function). As to the quantitative hierarchy of signs, verbal
language, in audioliterature, typically comes before sound effects in
the sense of (‘natural’, ‘mimetic’) noises, and those (‘natural’) noises
override special sound effects (in the sense of distorting/modulating/
filtering those other sounds). These ‘special’ sound effects are more
often than not outweighed by non-verbal vocal (human) sounds (snor-
ing, coughing, clearing one’s throat, etc.). Last but not least, we have
got silence as a separate discursive element16. The qualitative, that is
functional, hierarchy of codes with respect to the overall dimension of
the descriptive varies from audiotext to audiotext and from segment to
segment, as the second audio example below will illustrate.
3.4.2. The Relation between Description and Narration

As to the relation between description and narration, audioliterature
as here defined can be said to be largely and prototypically informed
by the macro-mode ‘narrative’ and that the descriptive constitutes
merely a sub-dominant mode within the genre (see 1.6 above).
3.4.3. The Descriptive Potential of Audioliterature and the

Recipient’s Share
Concerning the descriptive potential of the medium, if it is true that
the typical objects of descriptions “are static and spatial and addition-
ally appeal the sense of vision” (Wolf in this volume: 39), audio-
literature does not immediately seem to suggest itself as a genre with
a high affinity to the descriptive. The descriptive potential of audio-
literary works should, however, not be underestimated. The fact that
the heterogeneous audio signifiers can complement each other seman-
tically (and theoretically also contradict each other), renders the de-
16
Pauses are not included in this hierarchy because they can concern all other types
of signs except for silence. I have not yet come across an audio artefact with literal
‘pauses of silence’ (or nothing else, for that matter), even if, paradoxically, side-texts
to published radio plays sometimes demand them.
scriptive potential rather high and also enables producers to econo-

mize their audio material. Indeed, there is a necessity in audiolit-
erature “to describe scenery and people [...] implicitly and obliquely
and in a matter of seconds” (McLoughlin 1998: 56). Inasmuch as the
number and combinations of codes usually vary from segment to seg-
ment, so can and do the degree and function of descriptiveness – a
further intricacy that adds to the complexity of descriptivity in audio-
literature. Though immediately appealing to the sense of hearing, the
visual, to which the descriptive belongs in our customary hierarchy of
senses, is by no means excluded in audioliterature. On the contrary,
within the alternation between the narrative and the descriptive that
governs also audioliterary storytelling, the descriptive has a particular
potential to trigger the listeners’ imaginative capacity, to assist them
in creating internal visualizations.
3.4.4. Criteria Applied and Further Developed: Marcus Mundy’s

Change of Life
In order to elucidate the descriptive in our chosen medium I would
like to resort to another audio artefact in order to elaborate on the
theoretical considerations discussed above. The example taken is
Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life, a ‘radio play’ originally broadcast
on 11th December 2000 on BBC Radio 4 in the programme slot The
Afternoon Play. What follows is an approach that allows for a para-
digmatic analysis of individual segments of any given audiosyntagma.
This will lead to a consideration of the special functions of the de-
scriptive in the given medium in general, and within chosen segments
of this selected audiotext in particular. The initial sequence of this
current audiotext illustrates the points made so far and at the same
time serves as a good example of the descriptive as a subdominant
frame in an audio artefact informed by the sub-mode ‘dramatic’.
The story conveyed in Alexandra Caddell’s 44-minute audio arte-
fact is advertised in the schedules (as well as announced in the
introductory paratext) as follows: “In Alexandra Caddell’s comic
play, which takes place in real time, Marcus Mundy has 44 minutes in
which to park his car, get to the theatre and propose to his girlfriend.
But a lot can happen in 44 minutes.” (BBC Online 2000) Apart from
this brief paratext we, the listeners, have nothing but soundtrack to
194 Doris Mader
hold on to17. What do we actually hear in this radio artefact? We can

distinguish sound effects, verbal language in interaction in the form of
dialogue (Marcus verbally interacts with his fiancée Melissa) as well
as verbal language in the form of monologue (Marcus talking to
himself after he has dropped her at the theatre).
The broadcast transmits acoustic signals, sounds – and here I have
to resort to verbal description, which cannot match the real audio
experience – that imitate the sounds of an engine roaring, an indicator
clicking, the sounds of a car speeding up, braking and coming to a
halt by bumping into another car as well as the subdued roar of gen-
eral traffic and the car door opening and closing; also, the sound of
footsteps, and the rain falling as well as the rustling of the jacket
during our hero’s effort to manoeuvre his car into a parking space18.
The various codes this time are applied more in the simultaneous than
in the consecutive mode that is so characteristic of the ‘news bulletin’
frame of The War of the Worlds. The perception of these signals, in
the listener’s mind, becomes transformed into the apperception of
certain signs (see Cory 1974: 2-5). Apart from their ‘iconic’ mimesis,
all those signs are also highly descriptive of the spatial as well as the
temporal settings of this story19: the inside of a car, the road, the city,
which becomes further specified, first by means of ‘word scenery’
when Marcus triumphantly cries: “Who says you can’t park in Lon-
don?”, and further by means of the ‘descriptive’ sound effect of Big
Ben. Among the described ‘objects’ are both static ones (the existents
car, city, road) as well as dynamic ones, namely processes (the driving
and parking of a car, using the indicator for turning left or right, and
also time running out). Neither of these existents and processes, how-
17
We already imagine a rather young man and therefore expect to hear a fairly
young voice; also, the parking of a car somewhere near a theatre anticipates urban
surroundings. Additionally, the object ‘car’ is placed at the centre of our attention and
the reference to Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life taking place “in real time” (ibid.)
raises the expectation of some immediate action involving the character Marcus and
his fiancée, events to which we expect to become, so to speak, ear-witnesses.
18
These sounds resemble and thus adequately represent the ‘aural sense data’ of
driving a car. Their ‘as if’ quality (their fictional quality), however, has some more or
less sophisticated studio equipment as its source.
19
Those deictic signs are as much indexical (of the context) as they are ‘iconic’ in
imitating ‘natural’ sounds. This indexical function renders the use of those signs ‘de-
scriptive’.
ever, have so far contributed much to a concatenation of action, but

more or less only provide the background to (further) interaction.
The core function of ‘vivid’ representation is here achieved by the
immediacy and iconicity of the ‘dramatic mode’, by the congruence
between story time and broadcast time (hence “real time”) rather than
by any descriptive details. Characters and settings thus become identi-
fied rather than specified. The important thing is that the non-verbal
signifiers are reduced to the most typical ones that immediately allow
us to identify the situation and its spatial setting.
Audioliterature especially requires this economical use of acoustic
signifiers because of the scarcity of (broadcast) time and the limited
capacity of listeners to pay attention and transform ephemeral signals
into signs. This sort of economy, of course, is particularly important
in the opening sequences of audiotexts when listeners have to be
‘drawn’ into the story and be prevented from switching programmes
or turning off altogether, so the first few minutes are decisive20. What
is actually achieved here is an effet de réel, an illusion of reality. De-
pending on the ‘object’ described and the need to focus our attention
we are presented with sound signals consecutively or simultaneously.
A recording ‘on location’, that is, a recording of the real traffic noises
in a London street, would more likely than not simply irritate the
listener and could easily be confusing as to the object that is meant to
be signified. In other words, the ‘sound scenery’ in the initial se-
quence of Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life is effected by metonymic
icons that paradigmatically construct what would otherwise become
acoustically drowned21. The initial sequence metonymically presents
20
Audioliterature, in its dependence on the programme slots usually provided, has
to compete particularly with other radio programmes and is often ‘consumed’ by lis-
teners engaged in other activities (driving a car, cooking, jogging and the like). There-
fore, the genre in its typical mainstream manifestations cannot afford to put excessive
demands on listeners.
21
The sound effects not only iconicise ‘a car moving’, but within the basic iconic
mimesis (of this quasi-dramatic audiotext) those signifiers (the hooting, the braking,
the indicating) are also (simply) indexical in that they point towards an immediate
context, become indices of the objects themselves simply being there; thus, the sig-
nifiers ‘maintain’ the existence of a car and a man driving this car and talking to him-
self. Likewise, some of those acoustic signifiers are also indexical of the car turning
right and left and following a certain route through the city. Hence, what we have ac-
tually got here in terms of a paradigmatic discursive organization is the metonymic
juxtaposition of certain verbal sounds, sound effects and sound qualities that become
immediately associated with someone in the process of driving a car through the city
196 Doris Mader
us with the main character and also identifies the spatial and temporal
settings of the story. The even more specific temporal ‘localization’
of the story is achieved in the subsequent segments by the repeated
verbal references to time as well as by the striking of the clock
indicating the process of time passing.
On the basis of a detailed analysis of the whole of the artefact, and
applying all criteria discussed so far, we can state the following: The
basic relation between description and narration is determined in this
audio artefact by its ‘story-telling’ character and, hence, the macro-
mode of the narrative. The mode used (the immediacy of the dramatic,
the showing) indicates a here and now, making us ear-witnesses, so to
speak, to Marcus’s ensuing mishaps during his desperate pursuit of
‘change’, the coins he needs to feed the parking meter22.
The descriptive functions of identification, vivid representation
and providing facts rather than anything else, are sufficiently fulfilled
to qualify these introductory segments as highly, though not exclu-
sively, descriptive. As to ‘vivid representation’, the vividness derives
mainly from the acoustic immediacy of rather conventionalized iconic
sounds, typical of the situation referred to. Whenever Marcus moves
to a different place and meets a new character, the descriptive again
becomes relevant and will indeed temporarily also become the major
function of the acoustic signifiers combined. They serve to ‘sound-
shape’ the background to the foreground of the events and happenings
taking place.
of London (but signs, which, of course, originate from the technical devices of studio
equipment). These sounds in their iconic quality are supposed to originate from the
‘existents’ of the story, hence they are understood as belonging to the diegetic (or
intradiegetic) level. However, these signifying sound signals sometimes are even less
than iconic but, because of their metonymic and conventionalized quality, border on
being reduced to mere (semiotic) symbols: “[W]e find that the demands of indexical
signification are very often inversely related to those of iconicity.” (White 2005: 166)
22
During Marcus’s odyssey through the streets of London, his mishaps will include
an encounter with a sadistic traffic warden, who refuses to change money, and his
subsequent failure to change his fifty-pound note on a bus ride through London.
Despite all his efforts to act, he seems a fairly passive hero, who, after his fiancée’s
car has finally been hauled off, makes it to the theatre only in time to learn that
Melissa has swapped him for a man who manages to be there, on time. Eventually,
after having been charged with some criminal offences (including dodging the bus
fare and, in his desperate attempt to get some change, even drug trafficking), he ends
up earning his living by selling change to London car drivers who have found a
parking space but are in want of ‘change’.
As to the quantitative hierarchy, the verbal clearly dominates.

Moreover, because the sub-mode chosen is that of ‘showing’, the
descriptive is here subservient both to narration and to the sub-mode
‘dramatic’, hence we are provided with sound scenery and word
scenery. As concerns the descriptive potential, this particular format
of an audio drama as such does not particularly lend itself to the
descriptive. However, there is a certain need to transmit necessary
information as to characters, time, space other than by means of an
intracompositional narrator and/or the so-called ‘descriptor’. This
‘absolute nature’ of the dramatic mode is partly compensated for by
means of information integrated into dialogues, but a relatively high
percentage of the ‘descriptive’ details of the information required is
assigned to the various sound effects. The qualitative hierarchy in
support of the descriptive, in this typical format of audioliterature – a
‘radio play’ which actually deserves this term – thus privileges sound
effects over language over pauses (here signifying the passing of
time). Because of the relative scarcity of the information given, the
recipient’s share in imagining and thus creating the various ‘scenes’ is
comparatively higher than in most printed narratives, film and the
theatre. It is in this respect that audioliterature regularly (and thus
prototypically) deviates from most printed literature.
3.4.5. Criteria for Analysing Segments in Audio Artefacts

For each of the audioliterary segments scrutinized we would again
need to further specify our questions along the following lines: To
what extent is the segment descriptive in the first place (criterion of
descriptive quality)? If several codes are employed within certain
segments, which one dominates, and which ones are subdominant
(criterion of dominance)? To which code or codes and to which com-
bination and/or alternation is description delegated in the respective
segments (criterion of interplay)?
Although the sound effects in our chosen example (the intro-
ductory segments) are not quantitatively dominant, description here is
primarily assigned to sound effects or at least as much to sound
effects as to language. The effect thus created is that of a background
and context ‘soundshaped’ by various non-verbal sounds, partly com-
plemented by Marcus’s talking to himself, a background to which the
verbal interaction also with his fiancée is foregrounded. The descrip-
tive, however, is not exclusively performed by the non-verbal acoustic
198 Doris Mader
signifiers; what we get in the ‘service’ of the descriptive is an inter-

play of the privileging of one type of sign before another – and vice
versa.
3.5. Specific Functions of the Descriptive in Audioliterature

3.5.1. Focussing the Recipient’s Attention
In contrast to the descriptive in general, the descriptive in audiolitera-
ture, in whatever way encoded, rarely resorts to and usually cannot
afford lengthy and ‘detailed’ descriptions: sensory details are much
less regularly specified in audiotexts than in other literary media and
are more often than not left to the listener’s imagination. But when-
ever more detailed descriptions occur, they usually heighten the recip-
ient’s attention and awareness. Such foregrounded details and objects
sometimes have an outstanding or a rather ambiguous or even enig-
matic quality that would be extremely difficult to convey as con-
vincingly and effectively in other genres and media, including film.
3.5.2. Description versus Interpretation and the ‘Epistemological’

Function in Artist Descending a Staircase
In order to outline what I suggest referring to as the ‘epistemological’
function of the descriptive in audioliterature, I am now going to inves-
tigate a more ‘highbrow’ audiotext, one of the very few published23
and likewise ‘canonized’ audiotexts, namely Artist Descending a
Staircase by Tom Stoppard (originally broadcast in 1972). This ‘play
for radio’ is as much about art in general (hence the title’s intermedial
allusion to Marcel Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending a Stair-
case” [“Nu descendant un escalier”]) as about the audio medium itself
and thus also meta-aesthetically investigates the most pertinent
qualities and ‘strange’ possibilities of radio. It is specifically relevant
to the question of the descriptive because the two central enigmas of
its story hinge upon the tension between ‘description’ and ‘interpreta-
tion’, evoking a gestalt-switch picture as ambiguous as the well-
known duck-rabbit picture.
It is the story of three artists (Donner, Beauchamp and Martello)
who have been living together for over fifty years and in their young
23
‘Published’ until recently almost always meant ‘printed’ and hardly ever, unfortu-
nately, issued as tape or CD.
days entertained a relationship with a woman, Sophie, who was af-

fected by a gradual loss of sight, the alleged ‘blindness’ of the medi-
um radio thus becoming mirrored as well as exploited on the level of
story. The play actually starts with an audio-within-the-audio-text,
namely a tape-recording supposedly being played in the here and now.
This recording acoustically conveys Donner being killed by falling
down the stairs. In the here and now Beauchamp and Martello accuse
each other of having committed murder. In a series of flashbacks24,
the story of a fatal misunderstanding unfolds. Hence, apart from
playing with the lack of visual and the medium’s most pertinent di-
mension, time (cf. Mader 2004), the artefact also exploits the tension
between description and other modes of communication, viz. interpre-
tation and narration.
One of two mysteries is Donner’s death, represented in an audio
recording, an acoustic representation, a fragmentary ‘description’ of
sorts. This sequence of sound effects, however, only testifies to some-
one falling down the stairs and is open to various interpretations as to
the logical concatenation of the sounds in what can be reconstructed
either as an “accident” or as “manslaughter” (Stoppard 1984: 19).
Hence, the sound effects themselves are not only described by the two
men left behind, but become the object of very subjective, and also
contradictory interpretations.
The other mystery of the story conveyed is who really loved
whom, and the solving of this riddle is dependent on ‘ekphrasis’, the
verbal description of a non-verbal artefact, in this case the description
of paintings25. So the acoustic mystery, which introduces Artist De-
scending a Staircase, has its counterpart in ‘innocent’ descriptions of
a series of paintings, which likewise prove to be potentially ‘deceiv-
ing’. This is linked to the three men’s extraordinary relationship with
Sophie, who, fifty years ago, committed suicide after having been left
by the one she believed she loved (Beauchamp) and rejecting the one
she believed she did not love (Donner). She had visited an art exhi-
bition called “Frontiers in Art”, to which the three young artists had
contributed a series of paintings, later described by her as “paintings
24
In terms of temporal structure, the audio artefact is constructed in a V-shape, go-
ing back as far as 1914 and then following the same stages alias ‘steps’ of ‘descend-
ing’ and ‘ascending’ time back to the present.
25
This is an analogy to James A. Heffernan’s famous definition of ekphrasis as “a
verbal representation of visual representation” (Heffernan 1993: 2).
200 Doris Mader
of barbed wire fences” (ibid.: 36). Sophie, who had had more eyes
for, but could not see sharply enough, the chosen one among the three
artists (Donner), later, when already blind, remembered the three men
photographed posing beside their paintings that, in her words, were
paintings of rows of “black stripes on a white background” (ibid.: 41).
In this way, Beauchamp had become ‘identified’ as her object of love
because his painting was marked out as the one she described as
representing “black railings on a field of snow” (ibid.)26. However,
Beauchamp was identified merely from Sophie’s inadequate descrip-
tion of his painting (while she could still see a little), and the missing
link in the reconstruction of the truth turns out to be the important
distinction between foreground and background. What the listener has
already begun to realize is now also beginning to dawn on Donner,
namely that identification depended on Sophie’s ambiguous and thus
misleading ekphrasis of the paintings, and that, subsequently, this
case of mistaken identity prevented Sophie and Donner from becom-
ing lovers.
MARTELLO: Did you ever wonder whether it was you she loved?
DONNER: No, of course not. It was Beauchamp.
MARTELLO: To us it was Beauchamp, but which of us did she see in her mind’s
eye ...?
DONNER: But it was Beauchamp – she remembered his painting, the snow
scene.
MARTELLO: Yes. She asked me whether I had painted it within five minutes of
meeting me in the garden that day; she described it briefly, and I had an image
of black vertical railings, like park railings, right across the canvas, as though
one were looking at a field of snow through the bars of a cage; not like
Beauchamp’s snow scene at all.
DONNER: But it was the only snow scene.
MARTELLO: Yes, it was, but [...] – it was a long time afterwards when this oc-
curred to me, when she was already living with Beauchamp ––
DONNER: What occurred to you, Martello?
MARTELLO: Well, your painting of the white fence ––
DONNER: White fence?
MARTELLO: Thick white posts, top to bottom across the whole canvas, an
inch or two apart, black in the gaps ––
DONNER: Yes, I remember it. Oh God.
MARTELLO: Like looking at the dark through the gaps in a white fence.
26
Yet, Donner is deceived when he says: “There was no choice. She fell in love
with him at first sight”. But he is quite right in adding: “As I did with her, I think.
After that, even when my life was at its best there was a small part missing and I knew
that I was going to die without ever feeling that my life was complete.” (Ibid. 55)
DONNER: Oh my God.
MARTELLO: Well, one might be wrong, but her sight was not good even then.
DONNER: Oh my God. (Ibid.: 55-56, my emphasis)
Since the black-and-white ‘Frontiers of Art’ paintings were obsessed

with fences, railings and bars of cages, the one ascribed to Beau-
champ, in Sophie’s unreliable ‘ekphrasis’, could as well have been
Donner’s, one being the other’s visual negative, so to speak. Depend-
ing on what is perceived as foreground or background, either painting
corresponds to the description given. This gestalt-switch effect could
very well account for Donner realizing the truth and thus, finally, los-
ing his balance and falling to death – but in fact he dies while trying
to kill a fly, and unlike Martello and Beauchamp, the audience real-
izes this innocent truth in the end. The sound tape and the paintings
referred to both become the objects of description, one a dynamic
(actantional), the other a static one.
The bipolarity of the descriptive is illustrated in the subjective and
(apparently) mutually exclusive versions, producing an ambiguity that
triggers off the ‘action’. Of course, this double polarity of description
is important in the understanding of the central enigma in Artist De-
scending a Staircase. The verbal descriptions, the verbal rendering of
the visual sensory data are confusing and the representation becomes
a threat to the identification of the object referred to. The conflicting
versions of the painting’s visual details, however, could also be inter-
preted as disclosing certain different ‘interests’ in establishing a par-
ticular version of the past, a past that can safely be (re)constructed as
no commitments whatsoever are entailed in the here and now.
3.6. Other Functions of the Descriptive in Audioliterature

The descriptive in the case of Stoppard’s radiotext does not only
compensate for the visual we are supposed to be deprived of in audio-
literature. It hence does not merely perform a) a compensatory func-
tion, but rather b) a focalizing function in that it also focuses our
attention on the central existents, on ‘what they really are’. Paradoxi-
cally, the descriptive functions of identification and clarification in
part become playfully undermined if not reversed in Artist Descend-
ing a Staircase, so that the descriptive is used here in a more general
c) epistemological function, namely the function of radically calling
into question the ‘reality’ of our perception and the role language
202 Doris Mader
plays in conveying these perceptions27. We can, however, particular-

ize further functions of the descriptive that belong to the ‘(proto-)
typical’ features of audioliterary storytelling.
3.6.1. ‘Suspending the Listener’s Disbelief’ and the ‘Ontological’

Function of the Descriptive in Audioliterature
Ambiguity is quite frequently carried to even further extremes than in
Artist Descending a Staircase, and the descriptive does have its role
in this, too. Actually, another important function of describing ‘sur-
faces’ of objects and giving specific sense data is to bestow reality to
that which is not just ambiguous, but also uncanny, surreal, or even,
in terms of the ‘realistic’, impossible. Characters and objects of such
an ambivalent ontological status that make listeners doubt whether or
not to believe what is ‘there’ acoustically, keep haunting the medium
radioliterature. Therefore, audioliterary descriptions not infrequently
even refer to existents that are not only ambiguous or difficult to con-
ceive of, but also of an ambivalent ontological status. This, in Fay
Weldon’s words, is also “part of the nature of those powerful alterna-
tive realities blithely referred to as radio plays” (Weldon 1985: vii)28.
“Descriptions can […] contribute to the illusionist experientiality
and the meaning of stories” (see in this volume: 44). This may even
refer to stories that border on the enigmatic, surreal, even the impossi-
ble. In this respect, the impact of the descriptive is arguably more
powerful in audioliterature than in other media. Because of the high
affinity of acoustic description to ‘reality’, listeners have the impress-
sion of being ‘close’ to what is (re)presented, and not only comple-
ment the given signs in the acoustic field but actually perform inner
visualisations and thus complement them also in another perceptual
field. This act of imagination is a very powerful psychological pro-
cess, especially because we not only imagine characters as real but at
the same time actually hear them speak, or cry, or even die. The de-
27
Moreover, those descriptions also meta-aesthetically foreground the way in which
the visual and the imaginative are of paramount importance in and for successful
radioliterature.
28
Shaun McLoughlin devotes a whole chapter to the question “how language prop-
erly employed can make the listener participate and believe in a reality beyond the
mundane and the every-day” (1998: 55) – and, of course, this applies not only to the
acoustic realization of language.
scriptive within such audio artefacts thus can bestow reality even to
that which runs counter to our understanding of the world.
This is, hence, another major function of the descriptive and a
more particular form of ‘suspending the listener’s disbelief’. Outside
the scope of science fiction radio plays, this ‘expansion’ of ‘reality’
towards the impossible works most evocatively if the rest of the ‘story
told’, by contrast, is in full accordance with what we regard as the
laws of our world. It works particularly well when the ‘incredible’
unexpectedly arises within commonplace mass media formats or un-
wonted forms of ‘ordinary’ (verbal) interaction and communication
that are so typical of the conventional audioliterary artefact.
One more example may illustrate this medium-specific ‘onto-
logical’ function of the descriptive: In The War of the Worlds, Orson
Welles contrived to make plausible, or at least believable, what goes
far beyond the listeners’ conception of reality by embedding it within
the format of a series of quasi-radio ‘reports’ (heightening the effect
with actual references to real places). Apart from the description of
the Martian cylinders transforming into Martian monsters, the final
conquest of New York by the Martians is a case in point:
[Announcer:] [over traffic sounds, sirens of ships, church bells] I am speaking
from the – roof of Broadcasting Building. I’m speaking from the roof of Broad-
casting Building, New York City. The – bells you hear – are – ringing to – warn
the people to evacuate the city as the Martians approach. Estimated in last two-
hours – three million people moved out along the roads – to the north – Hutchison
River Parkway still kept open for motor traffic. – Avoid bridges to Long Island,
hopelessly jammed. – All communication with New Jersey shore closed – ten
minutes ago. – No more defences. – Our army is wiped out – artillery – air force –
everything wiped out. This may be the – last broadcasting. – We’ll stay here to the
end. [Over the sound of a choir singing] People are holding service below us – in
the cathedral. Now I look down the Harbour. All – all manner of boats,
overloaded with fleeing population, pulling out from docks. Streets are all
jammed. – Noise in crowds like New Year’s Eve in city. Wait a minute, the –
enemy now in sight above the Palisades. Five – five great machines. First one is –
crossing the river. I can see it from here, wading – wading – wading the Hudson
like a man wading through a brook. – A bulletin’s handed me. – Martian cylinders
are – falling all over the country. One outside of Buffalo, one in Chicago – St.
Louis – seem to be timed and spaced. – Now the first machine reaches the shore.
He – stands watching, looking over the city. – His steel, cowlish head is even with
the sky-scrapers. He waits for the others. – They rise like a line of new towers on
the city’s west side – now they are lifting their metal hands. – This is the end now.
Smoke comes out – black smoke – drifting over the city. – People in the streets
see it now. – They’re running towards the East River, thousands of them –
dropping in like rats. – Now the smoke’s spreading faster. It’s – reached – Times
204 Doris Mader
Square. – People are trying to run away from it, but it’s no use. They’re falling
like flies. – Now the smoke’s crossing Sixth Avenue – Fifth Avenue – one
hundred yards away ... it’s fifty feet [Reporter starts coughing, then the sound of
something falling to the floor, traffic noise continues, sirens of ships. Silence.]
[My transcript]
Quite a number of listeners in 1938 were actually taken in both by the

vividness and feigned ‘accuracy’ of these ‘live’ descriptions and by
the presence of those ‘objective’ (intracompositional) descriptors that
were supposed to be merely reporting. Thus, this ‘ontological func-
tion’, even if not intended in this way, simply made them believe the
whole story of a Martian invasion was actually true.
The ontological function of the descriptive, however, is more
frequently employed in ways more subtle than this to capture audi-
ences. In a more recent BBC production, The Sea Warrior (2001) by
Leila Aboulela, a character of an ambivalent nature ‘appears’, a man
who knows things about other people and their past, a knowledge
from a source quite unimaginable. He pesters his victims with details
about alleged wrongdoings in the past. What makes the appearance of
this strange man so uncanny is that his ‘real existence’ is substan-
tiated not only by his acoustic presentation, but also because two
intracompositional descriptors, in fact the two characters harassed by
him, independently of each other ‘encounter’ him and give descrip-
tions of his outer appearance. Interpreting his voice, alias character, as
a mere psychological projection will therefore simply not work29, so
that the descriptive here performs the ontological function of verify-
ing the existence of someone quite inconceivable and making us be-
lieve in this character’s ‘reality’.
The descriptive in this case constitutes a subdominant mode in an
audio artefact that is informed by both the sub-modes ‘dramatic’ and
‘narrative’ and hence belongs to the category of ‘hybrid’ forms. This
format of modal mixture is probably less frequently used than the
purely ‘dramatic’ radiotexts, yet constitutes an important and fairly
common type of radioliterary artefact, which, however, cannot be fur-
ther elaborated on within the scope of this paper.
29
Not only do the two central characters ‘verify’ his existence but in the end his
dead body is found by others, so his existence, if not his identity, somehow becomes
proven.
3.6.2. Description in Audioliterature and Transferability of Story

The epistemological and ontological functions of the descriptive also
call into question one of the basic assumptions, if not dogmas of
narratology, that is, the transferability of story into other media.
Although this applies to many audio artefacts, quite a number of
‘sound stories’ seem to work not just best, but more or less exclu-
sively in the medium radio. Interestingly enough, it is particularly
artefacts playing with the epistemological as well as the ontological
function that are radiogenic – i. e., suitable for being broadcast – to a
very high degree and resist transposition into other media. One more
widely known example here is Harold Pinter’s ‘play’ Old Times.
Originally written for the radio, the audiotext makes full use of
ontological ambivalence. One of the characters ‘featured’, Anna, the
‘third’ figure in a strange triangle, in her acoustic presence ambiva-
lently oscillates between a mere projection used by a married couple
in a struggle for power over the past, and a guest present physically.
Her ontologically uncertain ‘presence’ fails to work equally well on
stage because there her physical presence allows for less scope to
operate this ambivalence.
3.7. The Bipolarity of Audioliterary Descriptivity and Other

Sub-Modes of Audioliterature
Apart from the more or less ‘dramatic’ as well as ‘hybrid’ audiotexts,
we can now work our way through the other possible sub-modes that
can potentially inform audioliterary texts, namely the lyric and the
narrative sub-modes. As opposed to the lyric, the narrative can be
situated on both the levels of macro- and sub-modes30. If purely
narrative audio artefacts are reduced to the use of language, they use
the radio only as a transmitting medium – as much as purely verbal
audio books providing voiced instead of printed texts – and do not
properly belong to an intermedial discussion31. However, as far as the
30
Each macro-mode can feature on a sub-mode level, so the narrative can appear on
various levels. The lyric, however, does not constitute a macro-mode, but needs to be
distinguished from other modes by means of prototypical rather than definitive crite-
ria.
31
In this purely ‘narrative’ mode, narrative voices, even if there are several, tend to
be arranged with either no, radically reduced, or merely ‘ornamental’ sound effects. In
their (near-)monomediality they more or less converge with printed narratives, and
206 Doris Mader
use of the lyric mode is concerned, there are quite a number of audio-
texts worth scrutinizing, and I would like to round off my survey with
a very brief comment on what is probably the most famous English
audioliterary text to date, namely Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood
(first broadcast in 1954), an audiotext informed much more by the
lyric than by the dramatic sub-mode. As is known, in aesthetic con-
texts description is never quite an innocent business, and there is little
tendency towards completely innocent descriptions in literary arte-
facts in general. Indeed, ‘innocence’ is certainly not a label that can
be stuck to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, neither in terms of the
descriptive discourse nor as regards contents. There is hardly any ‘in-
nocence’ to any of the existents or happenings (in a specific sense)
and descriptions, in particular as to ‘characters’ and other living crea-
tures appear heavily laden with ‘attitude’.
FIRST VOICE (very softly): To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless
night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble-streets silent and the
hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack,
slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles
(though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain
Cat [...]. (Thomas 1989: 3)
This initial passage no doubt answers to, as well as runs counter to,
some of the criteria of description: it refers to the season of spring and
a particular (fictional) sea-side place (temporal and spatial deictics).
A lot is packed into these lines, in fact the deictic reference to a wood
near the sea (the eponymous “Milk Wood”), the black sea itself and
the fact that there are a number of fishing boats “bobbing” on the
waves. What immediately strikes us here is that despite the obvious
reference to a certain place at a certain seasonal time at dusk, this de-
scription uses the somewhat paradoxical metaphor of a “wood limp-
ing invisible down to the [...] sea” (ibid.). Even the visual and aural
sensory data of this (otherwise unspecified) place previously given
are defined by means of the place’s invisibility and silence, i. e., the
fact that nothing can be seen or heard. The temporal and spatial
deictic references, however, are complemented by the somewhat cu-
rious references to anthropomorphic creatures. The silence and desert-
edness of the town we are supposed to create mentally is enlivened by
means of “the courters’ and rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to
whatever descriptive potential they possess, it belongs to the discussion of ‘narrative

fiction’ rather than intermediality.
the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishing-boat bobbing sea”

(ibid.).
If the descriptive is understood as a bipolar phenomenon (see the
introduction to this volume: 26), then in this wording the subject-
centred pole can clearly be distinguished from the object-centred one.
The wood “limping invisible” down to the sea is an animating meta-
phor and already mirrors several important features of this audiotext:
the anthropomorphization of nature, a principle at work in the whole
of this audiotext, the ‘objective’ invisibility of the ‘described’ objects
and the topical element of sexuality hinted at with the ambiguous
“moles see[ing] fine tonight” (Thomas 1989: 3) – to ‘see’ in the sense
of ‘having sexual intercourse’ and ‘mole’ also being slang for the
male sexual organ.
The line about the “wood limping invisible down to the [...] sea”
(ibid.) in fact beautifully mirrors the double polarity of the object-
centred pole (the wood sloping down, even if we can’t see it now and
the trees being sinewy) and the subject-centred pole (the wood
imagined as a living creature moving somewhere and being full of
other living creatures itself, lovers and animals engaged in sexual
activity). Also, this raises the question of who speaks and who per-
ceives, so the issue is that of the intracompositional transmitter (the
so-called descriptor) and the question of subjectivity. The “First
Voice” in the audiotext is never labelled to be just a voice and not a
character, and it takes some time to realize that this voice and the
“Second Voice” (ibid.: 8 et passim) are situated on a different level
than the many characters that will flit in and out of our ‘earshot’. This
descriptive part vividly represents the place ‘Llareggub’ – an anagram
of ‘bugger all’, which, apart from its obscene meaning also means
‘nothing at all’. The description of this place as hosting creatures
engaged in their never-ending love-game, forms part of the subjective
generalization along the lines of animating and anthropomorphizing
metaphors. The human ‘existents’ and their anthropomorphic counter-
parts are rather at the centre of the focus on what happens to and with
them; they appear in a paradoxical passivity (except for choosing sex-
ual partners and giving birth to children), kind of driven by this one
unifying force32. Those subjective and highly lyrical descriptions play
32
The individual episodes in this “play for voices” (subtitle) afford the pleasure of
illustrating, in numerous variations, this all-embracing force at work. The overall ‘nar-
rative’ thrust is reduced to the teleological principle of procreation, the never-ending
cycle of life and death; and although these little episodes do have some rudimentary
208 Doris Mader
an essential part in the construction of the overall meaning of this

audio artefact. It is this second pole, the pole of evaluation and per-
spective that determines the attitude towards the characters and
objects described33.
4. Conclusion
Having worked our way systematically through radiotexts informed

by the dramatic, narrative, lyric and ‘hybrid’ micro-modes34, we have
come across descriptions in all of the subtypes, and although the de-
scriptive takes on different shapes, performs different functions with-
in different audiotexts, and proportions vary to a high degree, there is
no audiotext that can do entirely without the descriptive. Even though
drawing an exact line between where description ends and narration
or interpretation starts has proven to be a difficult business, the inves-
tigation of description in audioliterature nevertheless has turned out to
be rewarding in the sense of adding new perspectives to the under-
standing of this genre.
Audioliterary texts can be defined by their internal inter- or pluri-
medial quality (the fact that they prototypically combine several dis-
tinct codes and most frequently foreground verbal language). They
also characteristically participate in the basic semiotic macro-mode of
narrative (the cognitive frame ‘narrative’), and because of this affinity
to ‘story’, description in audioliterature usually has to be seen as
auxiliary or ancillary to the overall narrative thrust.
Concerning the opposition audioliterary descriptiveness vs. audio-
literary narrativity, this distinction can be applied quite neatly when
we focus on individual parts of audiotexts where a preponderance of
the descriptive occurs fairly regularly, while the overall narrative
function – that of conveying a story – remains not only unaffected,
narrative elements to themselves, due to the necessity to introduce numerous charac-

ters and to display the ever-changing circumstances of the ever-selfsame (sexual) in-
tercourse, they contain more descriptivity than narrativity.
33
The temporal verbal medium, usually described (defined) as best suited to render
dynamic objects of description (in consecutive stages) in an iconic discursive se-
quence, in this radiotext is mainly used to evoke the mental image of the spatial and
visual existents (sea, wood, town, people) and, therefore, of something static rather
than dynamic.
34
See footnote 12.
but indeed is supported by descriptions. The ‘existents’ of story

become ‘subjected’ to description as an important step to setting up
immediate contexts and the potential for action, so that the deictic
function of the descriptive is the most relevant. This is already one of
the most fundamental functions of the descriptive in audioliterature,
namely providing for the recipient’s orientation as to the spatial and
temporal setting and the anthropomorphic characters involved. Such
deictic referencing is normally achieved by verbal prompts of a
deictic nature as well as the ‘soundscaping’ and ‘soundshaping’ of
surrounding contexts by means of sound effects. It has been interest-
ing to see, however, that although sound effects play such an impor-
tant part in establishing spatial and temporal dimensions, the acoustic
signifiers actually deployed for this purpose are typically highly con-
ventionalized ones, especially in initial segments, where normally no
defamiliarizing effects whatsoever occur. This is largely due to the
ephemeral nature of radioliterature that requires a specific organisa-
tion of the signifiers and puts a relatively high demand on the
recipients, whose share in creating the fictional world is much higher
than, e. g., in film, where they are presented with ready-made visuals
with only a soundtrack accompaniment. From the subdominant frames
in audioliterature, the ‘dramatic’ one in particular has been highlight-
ed and chosen in order to illustrate the various ways in which the de-
scriptive is incorporated into the audio-discourse and is relevant for
the conveying of the story:
Firstly, we have seen that the necessity to restrict discourse to the
programme slots requires, prototypically, that the essential informa-
tion as to character, place and time is given rather plainly. This usu-
ally results in initial segments of audioliterary texts only indicating,
instead of describing in detail, spatial and temporal settings in the
form of sound scenery and word scenery. Thus the descriptive here
performs, apart from its deictic, more of an economizing function.
Authors and particularly professional directors and producers also
have to economize in the use of sounds so as not to overwhelm the
listeners with a torrent of different sounds, but sound signifiers that
can easily be decoded simultaneously to their aural transmission.
Secondly, focussing on the descriptive within audioliterature
allows us to appreciate the high degree to which recipients have to
mentally create the worlds often only scantily ‘sketched’ out to them.
As a subdominant frame within audioliterary storytelling, the descrip-
tive has been shown not only to have an important compensatory
210 Doris Mader
function, especially as far as spatial settings and scenery as well as the

outer appearance of characters are concerned; descriptions in audio-
literature also perform an aesthetic function, in the term’s literal
meaning of ‘perception’, namely in assisting us to internally visualize
what is not shown, but acoustically represented.
Thirdly, though audioliterature is bound to the technical medium
radio and is thus a temporal medium, this does not necessarily mean
that audioliterature also favours temporal objects of description. The
preferred objects of description proper are usually the so-called exis-
tents from the level of story (characters, temporal and spatial set-
tings).
Furthermore, individual objects or characters become further spe-
cified in audioliterature if there is a need to specifically focus our
attention on them. It is because of the scarcity with which ‘objects’
receive detailed descriptions that those descriptions are usually of par-
amount importance for the meaning and significance of an audiotext.
Also, despite the ‘immediacy’ of (dramatic) audiotexts, there can be
no visual ‘proof’, so conflicting descriptions of such objects are of
particular interest. Apart from this more general focalizing function of
the prototypically heavily linguistic passages, we have also encoun-
tered two more specific ones, the ontological function of bestowing
reality to someone or something beyond belief (The War of the
Worlds; The Sea Warrior) and the epistemological function of calling
into question the capacity of human beings to perceive, to ‘know’ and
to represent reality (Artist Descending a Staircase).
Among the potential myriad of possibilities of combining codes in
quantitative terms, we have been able to deduce a typical quantitative
hierarchy of sound signifiers for audioliterary texts in general. Inde-
pendently of the structure of the individual artefact, the general pre-
dominance of verbal discourse in audioliterature has accustomed lis-
teners to foregrounding the verbal before the ‘background’ of ‘other
sounds’. This generalized quantitative hierarchy has had its effects on
productive as well as receptive processes so that the specific interplay
of these layers of the audio texture for individual works has to be
foregrounded against the background of this norm. For an under-
standing of the function of the descriptive it is, therefore, essential to
set the qualitative hierarchy of the various acoustic signifiers against
the general background of the quantitative hierarchy.
Against this general backcloth we have therefore also had to
establish a specific prototypical qualitative hierarchy of acoustic sig-
nifiers in their descriptive function. We have been able to show that

sound effects, though equally important in terms of the descriptive as
linguistic signs, are not equally distributed in the various segments
nor are they equally assigned to the (basic) functions of the descrip-
tive. The elemental deictic functions of identification, representation
as well as of providing the factual are more often than not efficiently
delegated to non-verbal, highly conventionalized sound signifiers,
particularly in initial segments of the discourse of sound stories. The
vividness of representation, as well as the illusion of reality are
typically effected by a carefully calculated and well-balanced combi-
nation of both the verbal and the non-verbal (including music). All
this usually applies to the description of dynamic as well as of static
objects. Following the outline of the specific functions of the descrip-
tive, the purely verbal overrides the use of all other types of signs in
foregrounding objects, whereas sound effects (and music) are pre-
dominant in providing contexts and background.
The general endeavour of the preceding pages has been to sharpen
our senses, our sense of hearing, to the flux that exists between the
two-dimensional coordinates of the descriptive vs. the narrative, as
well as between the object-centred vs. the subject-centred poles of de-
scriptions. If we include the three-dimensional aspect of foreground
vs. background, we might get a better idea and – I am fully aware of
the paradoxical nature of this metaphor – a better ‘picture’ of how de-
scription needs to be set off against other cognitive frames. This way,
and here is yet another such paradox, we can more easily ‘figure out’
where, how and wherefore description actually occurs in audiolitera-
ture.
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For Your Eyes Only
Some Thoughts on the Descriptive in Film
Klaus Rieser
This article attempts to elucidate the rarely discussed issue of description in film
(with implicit and sometimes explicit comparison to literature). After a discussion
of Christian Metz’s ‘descriptive syntagma’, three theses are presented: first, that
descriptive sequences in film are not merely spatio-static, but rather include
events; second, that in most cases narration and description coexist in film; and
third, that description and narration, although coexisting, are nonetheless to be
seen as independent variables. In discussing these theses, the article traces the
peculiar qualities of description in film, focusing on its relation to narrative. Next,
the usefulness of the term ‘description’ for film theory and analysis is prob-
lematized, and some of its possible structural and ideological pitfalls are pointed
out. Finally, the article presents terms under which description – albeit with a
different focus – has been discussed in film theory and criticism.
1. Introduction
In his introductory article to this volume, Werner Wolf outlines a

general theory of the descriptive, applicable to theory as well as to
everyday experience, and, moreover, presents a comparative analysis
of description in various media, concentrating on literature, music and
painting. Like other contributors to this volume, I wish to add to, and
engage with, this analysis by focusing on the descriptive in a particu-
lar medium, in this case, film.
My own thoughts on the descriptive in film will progress from a
concept that was first formulated by the legendary semiologist of film
Christian Metz. The presentation of Metz’s ‘descriptive syntagma’
will be followed by a discussion of the relation between description
and narration (or, more precisely, the descriptive and the narrative) in
film, against the backdrop of that relation in literature. An analytic
concept of this relation, I contend, cannot be simply transferred from
literature to film, but has to be tailored to film’s unique and specific
216 Klaus Rieser
dimension, the dominating visual aspect1. With this visual aspect in

mind, I will here present three theses as a first approach to concep-
tualizing the descriptive in film. I will suggest that description in film
encompasses also events (first thesis) and that in film narration and
description coexist (second thesis). The third thesis – that narration
and description are to be treated as independent variables – leads to
the suggestion of an analytic grid which enables us to distinguish the
degree of descriptivity of filmic genres, individual films, or film
scenes. Finally, I will problematize the term ‘description’ for film
analysis before turning to central terms under which the descriptive
has been discussed in film theory.
2. Christian Metz’s ‘Descriptive Syntagma’
In this volume, Wolf and Nünning point out that descriptivity is rarely
discussed in literary theory. Yet it is almost never discussed in film
theory and does not generally receive an entry in dictionaries of film
terms2. A notable exception to this neglect is an account by perhaps
the most eminent film semiologist and key theorist of film form,
Christian Metz, who, however, most likely transferred the term from
literary theory. In this early phase (he later turned to psychoanaly-
tically oriented theorizations of film) he intended to get to the bottom
of the common linguistic metaphor according to which ‘film is (like)
a language’. Therefore, he compared film to natural languages in a va-
riety of ways. He came to conclude, for example, that film was not
langue (language system) but langage (language), amongst other rea-
sons because it lacked the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Interest-
ingly for narratologists, he based this claim on the fact that (main-
stream) film has adopted a narrative form (no image resembles an-
other one, but most narrative films resemble each other in their
principle syntagmatic configuration). Thus, in developing his ‘Grande
Syntagmatique’ in his books Essais sur la signification au cinéma
1
For the same reason this article is restricted to the influence of the visual on cine-
matic storytelling, although film consists of at least five dimensions which constitute
its language: moving photographic images, recorded phonetic sound, recorded noises,
recorded musical sound, and writing (credits, intertitles, written materials in the shot).
2
E. g. Blandford 2001; Hayward 1996; O’Sullivan 1994. An informal survey at a
conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies also revealed that the term
puzzled many media scholars.
For Your Eyes Only 217
(1971, 1972) and Film Language (1974), he distinguished eight syn-

tagmatic types (see below, Figure 1).
Autonomous segments
1. Autonomous shot
Syntagma
Achronological syntagmas
2. Parallel syntagma
3. Bracket syntagma
Chronological segments
4. Descriptive
Narrative syntagma
5. Alternate (narrative) syntagma
Linear narrative syntagmas
6. Scene
Sequences (proper)
7. Episodic sequence
8. Ordinary
Figure 1: Metz’s eight syntagmatic types [my graph]
With these eight syntagmatic types Christian Metz limits his analysis
to ‘autonomous segments’, i. e. to segments that can be distinguished
from other elements within the film. Amongst those, he differentiates
the ‘autonomous shot’ (for example a sequence shot) from what he
calls ‘syntagmas’, constituted by a number of shots and in film litera-
ture more often referred to as sequences or scenes. Amongst these
syntagmas he isolates ‘achronological syntagmas’ (the ‘parallel syn-
218 Klaus Rieser
tagma’3, and the ‘bracket syntagma’). The chronological syntagmas

are further subdivided into the ‘descriptive syntagma’ and a variety of
‘narrative syntagmas’. A descriptive syntagma is an autonomous seg-
ment of a film that consists of various shots arranged in chronological
order (or, more precisely, arranged to create the impression of a
chronological succession). It shares these characteristics with other
chronological syntagmas, but is characterized by its non-narrative as-
pect. Metz, who was clearly drawing the parallel from literary theory,
even claimed that the descriptive syntagma merely describes and that
the relation between its elements is spatial rather than temporal, a
characterization which we find precisely in literary analysis.
James Monaco, author of the highly successful How to Read a
Film (1981), paraphrases Metz’s system in the following manner:
“Either a film segment is autonomous or it is not. Either it is chrono-
logical or it is not. Either it is descriptive or it is narrative […]”
(1981: 189). Monaco here literalizes what is implied by Metz’s sys-
tem, namely that the categories are mutually exclusive and pure. This,
however, does not hold true. I do concede that it is feasible to isolate
‘descriptive syntagmas’, chronological segments of a film which are
predominantly non-narrative. Typical descriptive syntagmas in this
sense are opening sequences or establishing shots (usually long dis-
tance shots which serve to introduce the setting wherein the action
then takes place). However, a first problem of the Metzian system is
constituted by the fact that these segments are rarely only descriptive.
Rather, they already contain – or at least foreshadow – narrative
elements, such as introducing characters, historical situations, or geo-
graphic descriptors.
The opening sequence of Alain Resnais’s L’Année dernière à
Marienbad (1961) may serve as an example here. The film is re-
nowned for its overlong tracking shot of the location (accompanied by
cryptic off-screen narration), almost completely devoid of any human
agents or action, for the most part reduced to depicting the walls and
ceilings of the ornate château with repetitive and indifferent camera
movements. Yet the lack of action ties in closely with the narration,
which also addresses – in a painfully repetitive mode – isolation and
indifference. Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) in a similar vein
opens with lengthy landscape shots from a moving train. The descrip-
3
This type of segment, in which we are most commonly taken back and forth be-
tween two locations, is usually called parallel montage or parallel editing.
tive mode of this opening gives way to the introduction of themes

(fear, death, passivity) as well as representing the idiosyncratic aspect
of passing time and the difference between civilization and wilder-
ness.
We face yet another, more serious dilemma if we conclude from
the Metzian system that the narrative syntagmas can be set apart from
description. While we may indeed – at least to a certain extent –
isolate descriptive segments from the narrative flow in mainstream
film, the reverse is not true. As a general rule, narrative syntagmas in
mainstream film are at the same time descriptive! I thus contest the
usefulness of this Metzian distinction, which seems to be far more
adequate for the analysis of literature than of film, because a) the
descriptive in film generally includes action or at least movement and
b) because narrative in film is always also descriptive.
3. Thesis 1: Description in film is not merely spatio-static, but

rather includes events
As Werner Wolf, in his introduction to the present volume (23), elab-

orates in more detail, literary scholars tend to regard description as a
mode whose “proper stuff” are static, predominantly spatial ‘exist-
ents’ rather than dynamic, temporal ‘events’ as in narrations. In a re-
cent definition, Torsten Pflugmacher also ties description to existents:
“Description is a *text-type which identifies the properties of places,
objects, or persons (see EXISTENTS). Classical narratology defines
description as a narrative pause interrupting the presentation of the
chain of *events.” (2005: 101) Gérard Genette, too, defines descrip-
tion in a similar way, when he points out “the absolute slowness of
descriptive pause, where some section of narrative discourse corre-
sponds to a nonexistent diegetic duration.” (Genette 1980: 94f.) In
other words, for Genette, ‘descriptive pause’ (one of four subcatego-
ries of ‘duration’) occurs when time stands still in the story while de-
scription is carried on at length. (Cf. also Stam et al. 1992: 119f.)
At first sight, Gerald Prince seems to conceptualize the term ‘de-
scription’ like the authors cited above:
The representation of objects, beings, situations, or […] happenings in their
spatial rather than temporal existence, their topological rather than chronological
functioning, their simultaneity rather than their succession. It is traditionally
distinguished from NARRATION and COMMENTARY. (1987: 19)
220 Klaus Rieser
Interestingly, Prince here stresses the anti-chronological character of

description three times, probably because, in contrast to Chatman,
Pflugmacher, and Genette, he includes not only existents but also
‘happenings’ among the objects of description. Wolf in this volume,
too, asserts that the strict correlation of description with existents and
of narration with events is debatable. He specifies that one has to dis-
tinguish whether or not the text has “motivated action that involves
anthropomorphic agents, [which] are interrelated not only by chronol-
ogy but also by causality and teleology and lead to, or are conse-
quences of, conscious acts or decisions […]” (24). He refers to the
example of Reisebeschreibung [travel description] vs. Reisebericht
[travel narration] to exemplify that travel, clearly a temporal ‘event’,
can be rendered in a more descriptive or in a more narrative mode
(see ibid.).
In film, the dilemma is further exacerbated because description
here positively covers not only Chatman’s existents (settings and
characters) but also events (happenings and actions). While literature
often contains extended descriptive passages which interrupt the nar-
rative flow, in film spatio-static descriptive representation is generally
limited to a very short moment (generally, a shot of short duration),
which immediately gives way to camera movements (pans, tracking
shots), editing (for example, an assemblage of shots, which is typical
of introducing locales), or happenings as well as actions within the
frame. In fact, happenings are a classic of documentary film, which is
characterized by a high level of description. Two of the very first
films, by the brothers Lumière, both distinctly cinematic descriptions
of happenings, represent a train arriving at a station and workers
leaving a factory (see Illustration 1).
Apart from descriptive renderings of happenings, purely static
visuals such as landscapes or interiors do turn up in film, but these are
commonly rendered with a pan, a tracking shot or a zoom and thus
depart from the classic literary definition of description as ‘static’
(Wolf, however, draws attention to the fact that description can issue
from observing agencies in motion [cf. the introduction to this vol-
ume: 23]). More importantly perhaps, in narrative film a descriptive
pause – rare as it is – almost always serves a narrative purpose. As
Brian Henderson writes: “Even if no action occurs in this shot or in
this setting, the time devoted to them builds expectations for action to
come; they too are ticks on the dramatic clock. Indeed, few things
build more expectancy than silent shots of objects in a narrative film.”
(Henderson 1983: 10) In fact, description for its own sake, with little
or no aspect of narrativity or suspense-building, is extremely rare in
film.
Illustration 1: La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (1895)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), for instance, opens with

inert imagery while the story has not yet begun. The male protagonist
is asleep and no authorial voice-over distracts us while the camera
roams the highly circumscribed setting of the film (an apartment and a
backyard). Description here transcends the static realm through cam-
era movement and through a depiction of happenings (people getting
up, a running cat, a quarreling couple). In typical Hitchcock manner,
the film misleads us by parallelizing irrelevant details (the cat in the
yard) and highly relevant ones (the quarreling couple). Thus, what is
presented is partly description, partly narration. Hitchcock also char-
acterizes the protagonist through purely visual representation. Inter-
estingly, we here get depiction (we see the protagonist), description
(from the photographs and the equipment in the room we defer that he
is a photographer) but also a narrative component (how he broke his
leg) all in highly cinematic manner.
222 Klaus Rieser
4. Thesis 2: In film, narration and description coexist
As Wolf mentions in his introduction to this volume, when one wants

to narrate in pictorial media – film, painting, photography – one al-
ways also has to describe. Film differs from painting and photography
(and among visual media is perhaps only equalled by comics) in its
superior potential for narrating. Indeed, it possesses this potential to a
degree that narration has become the prime function of the medium
film. Yet, as film primarily narrates through pictures and pictures are
usually not limited to narrative action but tend to contain also ‘back-
grounds’, in film, narration and description typically coexist: descrip-
tion even appears at any moment of the narration in a myriad of
instances4. Therefore, one of the defining principles of description in
literature, namely that it interrupts the narrative flow, does not hold
true for film5. Arguably, the intertwining of description and narration
is central for the lasting impact of the movies, whereby description –
at least in mainstream film – is often subservient to narration6.
Due to its syncretic character, film can even downplay or extin-
guish one of its strata (the visual, the auditory). It can, for example,
reproduce the situation of literature by limiting itself to the abstract
mode of spoken or written language. This can happen in what might
be called – in opposition to Genette’s ‘descriptive pause’ – ‘narrative
pause’: when description comes to a (relative) halt while narration
continues. Typically occurring in documentaries – e. g. interviews or
the (in)famous ‘talking heads’ of experts7 – this technique is also to
be found in narrative film, although it is quite rare. Examples are
4
The high level of descriptivity characterizing narrative film results in high hetero-
referentiality if a film is shot on location. For example, urban studies scholars today
turn to Harold Lloyd’s films because of their ‘accidental’ reproduction of the Lower
East Side.
5
Ironically, the most typical elements which interrupt narrative in film are song-
and-dance numbers in musicals.
6
Technically speaking, the descriptive element of film might surpass the narrative
in importance – witness newscasts, documentaries, etc. But cinema adopted as its
major representational mode the narration and in particular the narrational style of the
19th-century novel, which, according to Lukács’s (1936/1955) influential critique, had
itself shifted during that century from narration to description.
7
As is quite well known, the auditory trustworthiness of these characters is usually
determined by the visual depiction: we tend to trust the image more than the spoken
text in such circumstances.
static shots of narrators or narrative intertitles in silent films. Only

very rarely do such sequences receive longer duration, as is the case
when Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seaberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s À
bout de souffle (1960) read Faulkner to each other in bed, even after
the image has faded to black.
In mainstream narrative film narration and description seem to
coexist side by side, although they are actually more intertwined, a
fact that is hidden by the realist mode these films adopt. This con-
vention is exposed in Maya Deren’s experimental film Meshes of the
Afternoon (1943), which successfully thwarts our attempts to disclose
whether we are witnessing description or narration: at some point we
see the protagonist sleeping in a chair, followed by weird camera
angles depicting her moving through the apartment in a floating,
dance-like manner. This imagery suggests that we are witnessing a
dream of the sleeping character. But then the dream woman moves
into the room of the sleeping woman, and through subjective shots it
is implied that she (with us) looks at the sleeper. What is narration
and what is depiction in this scene? Is it all the depiction of a dream?
Is the sleeping woman our anchor of narrative meaning? Or is it the
dancing one? These questions emerge since the film as a whole re-
sembles a dreamscape, laying bare that realist film is merely a fiction
constructed through established devices which may be accepted (or
rejected) by the audience.
The complex intertwining of description and narration in film
necessitates a different conceptualization of their distinction and in-
teraction than the one we find on the agenda of the literary models.
Since essential parameters of their traditional distinction in literature
(stasis vs. action, description interrupting the narrative flow) do not
hold true for film, we have to discover new ways of understanding
their functioning. In the next section, I therefore suggest a model
which treats description and narration as independent variables but
allows to trace their interaction in various text types.
224 Klaus Rieser
5. Thesis 3: Description and narration, while occurring together,

are nonetheless independent variables
The literary definition of description could be graphically rendered in

the following manner:
description
narration narration
Figure 2: Graphical rendering of descriptive phenomena in literature
For film, I suggest to conceive of description and narration as orthog-

onal to each other. In graphic terms it would look like this:
descriptive
3 4
narrative
2 1
1 Narrative intertitles, interviews

2 Abstract film (e. g. flicker film), or Empire State Building
3 E. g. Koyaanisqatsi; Wavelength; La Région Centrale
4 Naturalist film; docu-fiction
5 Mainstream narrative film
Figure 3: Grid representing the potential relation between description and narration
in film
Figure 38 clarifies the relation of description and narration in a variety

of films and thus explains their essential differences. This can be best
exemplified by focal examples:
(1) A scene of someone reading Faulkner out loud (À bout de souffle)
is certainly high on the narrative axis, yet low in descriptive
detail.
(2) As opposed to that, abstract film is both low in descriptive detail
and in narrativity. For example, in so-called ‘flicker film’ light
and darkness succeed each other to achieve a stroboscopic effect.
Such films have neither narration nor description, reducing
themselves to the constitutive elements of cinema: light and
darkness. Somewhat less radical, but still very reductive with
regard to narration and description (in relation to its duration), is
Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964), in which a static camera captures
the Empire State Building for 485 minutes.
(3) Experimental documentaries such as Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio,
1983), Wavelength (Snow, 1967), or La Région Centrale (Snow,
1967) have pushed the boundaries of cinema by sporting an ex-
tremely high level of description while limiting narrative. For
example, Michael Snow’s Wavelength consists of a 45-minute
zoom, starting from a wide-angle shot of a room and ending on a
picture on a wall (see Illustration 2).
For the shooting of La Région Centrale, the filmmaker hid behind
a rock from where he controlled a complex camera mechanism,
which allowed an almost unimpeded movement and thus enabled
the filmmaker to ‘map’ the complete sphere of space around the
camera. Lasting for more than three hours and abstaining from
any narrative, this film is almost purely descriptive (although,
ironically, the landscape is barren). What makes these films
8
A three-dimensional model would be even more accurate: the x-axis would re-
main that of narrativity, signifying low to high narrative cohesion, and the vertical y-
axis would remain that of description, signifying low to high levels of descriptive de-
tail. The z-axis might be one that traces low to high levels of symbolism. For example,
abstract film is low on all three scales: the narrative, the descriptive and the symbolic.
Argumentative film features varying narrativity, high levels of description, and low
symbolization. Most mainstream narrative films, although sporting high variation
within and between the individual instances, feature relatively high narrativity, high
descriptivity, and medium levels of symbolism. For the sake of clarity, and because
the difference between descriptivity and narrativity is central to this volume, I have
restricted this to a two-dimensional model.
226 Klaus Rieser
cinematic (as distinct from photographic) is the kinesis of the

apparatus alone – a zoom in one case, tilting and panning in the
other.
Illustration 2: Wavelength (1967)
(4) Some naturalist films feature high narrativity and high descrip-
tivity throughout, yet
(5) the majority of films and many documentaries, occupy a vast
zone with relatively high descriptivity and high narrativity.
There is, of course, significant variation not only between, but also
within films. Thus, not only a particular film, but also a particular
scene can be situated on the grid. The descriptive shots and sequences
mentioned above (in particular establishing shots and introductory
sequences) are near the upper left corner, even if the rest of the film is
very narrative. The grid also helps to explain the suspense effect of
many descriptive shots: for a brief moment, the film shifts its mode
from the upper-right (high narrativity and high description) to the left
(reduction of narrativity), which creates the expectation of resuming
high narrativity. This effect may be further intensified by simultane-
ously reducing the level of descriptivity in that the number of details
is reduced, for example through a long take with little variation. In
such a case, narrativity is limited (even suspended) and descriptivity
wears away the longer the shot persists. This creates enhanced tension
for a resuming of action and description. The mere vista of a barren
landscape in a Western, if long enough, implies that some barbaric

incident is building up.
A very similar tension is created in Magdalena Viraga (1986) by
Nina Menkes. In this classic of feminist filmmaking, narration is sus-
pended at various points of the film. In these instances the protago-
nist, a prostitute, receives her clients and we are presented with a
close-up of her face in uncomfortably long takes, namely as long as it
takes the respective clients to reach their orgasms. We watch the
woman, who shows few signs of emotion, while we only see the
shoulders of the men and hear their breathing. The feeling of unease
created in the audience by the intrusion of privacy is again heightened
through a suspension of narration and reduction of description. After
a short time, we have grasped the situation, have studied the protago-
nist’s face and are ready ‘to move on’, something which the film re-
fuses. By offering scant narration and scant description (something
hardly possible in literature) the tension is more pronounced than if
we only had a narrative suspension. Moreover, these low-density de-
scriptive passages reveal that emotional impact can be achieved not
only with an abundance of description (e. g. facial expressions in
close-up), but also with a reduction of description. For these scenes in
Magdalena Viraga achieve a sort of direct experience: approximating
real time and employing the close-up, they do not merely describe dis-
gust, tension and boredom, but make us directly experience disgust,
tension and boredom.
6. Problems concerning the term ‘description’ in film theory
With these three theses in mind, I would like to turn to the question of
why descriptivity lacks prominence in film theory and criticism. One
possible explanation is that descriptivity is not at all secondary but
rather an all-too-integral part of film. In their highly influential book
Film Art (1990) David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson approach film
style from four different aspects: mise-en-scène (the theatrical mode
of film), the shot (photographic aspects), editing (the cinematographic
property), and sound. Description cuts across all of these categories,
in particular encompassing mise-en-scène and the shot (framing, long
228 Klaus Rieser
take, etc.), but also pertaining to diegetic sound and montage9. Per-
haps because it cannot be successfully categorized, descriptivity has
been neglected in film theory. A more convincing answer to the ques-
tion may be found in Chatman’s (1980/1992) specification that film
does not ‘describe’ but ‘depict’10. That is, it does not assert the state
of affairs (“The Aran Islands are very barren.”) but instead represents
the state of affairs. This useful distinction remains opaque, however,
unless we combine it with the ideological aspect of filmic depiction –
its correlation with extra-textual discursive formations. For the
seemingly direct and trustworthy filmic ‘depiction’, compared to
literature’s apparently more questionable ‘description’, is precisely an
ideological issue, as a short discussion of the role description plays in
film realism may reveal.
As in literature, description in film is tied to concreteness (non-
abstraction), is often highly detailed and, in its typical manifestations,
is referential, or, to be more precise, hetero-referential. However, the
depiction of non-referential characters and scenes in animation and
science fiction films unveils that the appearance of hetero-referen-
tiality is a textual effect of descriptivity with a textual and ideological
function. This is not an accidental complication of the term ‘descrip-
tivity’: the term connotes that a referent comes first and a textual ren-
dering (description) second. However, the artificial or invented refer-
ent lays bare that description is actually a textual mode, which has its
particular importance in the realist text, namely to construct a mean-
ingful and coherent realm. Thus the relation of descriptivity to other
textual parameters (narrativity, symbolization, characterization, focal-
ization, etc.), its textual functions, and its positioning within an inter-
textual discourse (including ideology) take primacy over the referen-
tial aspect.
It seems to me that this is the very reason why the term ‘descrip-
tivity’ is only of peripheral importance in film theory: because the
importance of filmic depiction lies in its contribution to the construc-
tion of a filmic world (and its concomitant ideology) and in its con-
9
In this context we might also take into account the relation description bears to
acting. Is acting subservient to the story and thus predominantly an element of de-
scription? Or is it one of the central elements through which narration takes place in
film?
10
Although this distinction between ‘depicting’ and ‘describing’ is entirely convinc-
ing, in this article I maintain the term ‘description’ in order to cohere with the termi-
nology of this volume.
struction of ways of seeing (and the concomitant viewing positions).

These are issues which are not at all neglected in film theory and
criticism. In other words, if we focus on description in film, then film
theory advises us to analyze the ‘rhetoric’ of description. As already
mentioned, one typical function of the rhetoric of description is the
creation of a realist text. While the image is polyvalent and the mean-
ings of its individual elements both alone and in combination can
never be pinned down successfully, its descriptive aspects are – in the
Hollywood mould at least – made subservient to narrative. Thus de-
scription is on the one hand devalued, yet on the other it gains unex-
pected importance because as prime bearer of verisimilitude, it
vouches for the coherency of the textual world. In fact, the audience
generally takes the image to be the most trustworthy aspect of a film.
For example, at one point in Stage Fright (1950), Hitchcock does not
use the image as a tool for realism but instead makes the image con-
form to a character’s narration in a first-person point of view. When it
is later revealed that the character lied, the audience is usually
disconcerted because it cannot accept an image to ‘lie’.
The ideological perils of realist description have been particularly
widely discussed regarding documentary film. Man of Aran, shot in
1934 by Robert Flaherty, one of the founding fathers of documentary
film, can serve as an example that the ideological burden of film is
not limited to the narrative construction (in this case, the choice of
voice-over narration, editing or re-enactments) but also to descrip-
tivity itself. Like his other films, Nanook of the North (1922) or
Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926), Man of Aran shares
Flaherty’s vision of a humanity set against the cruelty of the natural.
However, when George C. Stoney in his 1977 documentary How the
Myth Was Made revisited some of the Flaherty locations, he found
disillusionment: where Flaherty had shown a barren field, pure de-
scription, which suggested that the poverty of the people of Aran was
to be attributed to their harsh environment, Stoney panned a little
further to reveal a landlord’s mansion, thus making description reveal
that the source of poverty in the area was of socio-economic rather
than of environmental nature.
Consequently, to study descriptivity in a merely formalist manner
creates new difficulties. The formalist or structuralist approach tends
to disregard or neglect other aspects such as the relations between text
and author(s), text and audience, text and other texts, text and dis-
course (in its Foucaultian sense). I assume that this is the main reason
230 Klaus Rieser
why the issue of description – or depiction – is generally disregarded

in film theory, and appears instead under a variety of rubrics more
eminent for the study of these relations.
7. Some issues under which description has been discussed film

theory
Aspects of description in film that have been widely discussed in film

theory include questions of detail, depth of field (spatiality), referen-
tiality, the relation of image to narrative, authorship, questions of the
construction of gaze, issues of spectatorship, the construction of view-
ing positions, etc.
As already mentioned, one prime location for the debate of such
matters has been amongst practitioners and theoreticians of documen-
tary films. This has led to a variety of approaches in making docu-
mentaries (e. g. cinema verité, direct cinema, reconstructive cinema)
which were aimed at minimizing subjective interferences or else
rendering them conscious and transparent. Translated into the discus-
sion of this article and this volume, many of these techniques aimed at
reducing narrative in favor of supposedly noncommittal and objective
description or else at precisely exposing description as motivated,
subjective, and/or in the service of hidden focalization. In relation to
narrativity, analogous debates surrounded the favoring of the long
take and deep focus, which – due to a preference of mise-en-scène (i.
e. description) over editing – were said to allow the viewer greater
freedom in navigating his or her gaze. See Illustration 3 for an exam-
ple of a deep focus shot rich in descriptive detail.
Similar discussions have taken place around the opposition ‘open
vs. closed form’. Against Hollywood’s closed form, it has been
claimed that the open form, which integrates the extra-diegetic space,
favors the described against the description and thus reveals the con-
structed nature of the filmic text. Illustration 4 is an example of such
open form: The car is moving to the left background, the woman is
moving right, and her gaze is directed to the left foreground. More-
over, all three vectors point outside the frame, drawing attention to
the fact that the filmic shot does not represent reality but is rather a
creation (or at least a selection).
Illustration 3: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
Illustration 4: Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
Immediacy became another supposed guarantee of descriptive real-

ism. Particularly since the 1960s, when new and lighter equipment
allowed increased flexibility, documentarists treated their subjects
head-on in direct cinema and cinema verité style. It is interesting to
see how these methods, which were designed to enhance referen-
tiality, were soon integrated as stylistic features in narrative films.
232 Klaus Rieser
Today jerky camera movements in narrative film signify hand-held

equipment, which in turn signifies immediacy, realism, or ‘truth’.
Very soon, however, such technical preferences as the long take or
deep focus were themselves demystified as tokens of objectivity. This
feeds back into my argument that it is not the distinction between
description and narration which is truly at stake in film, but rather a
representational (or communicative, if you will) process between
authors, social environment, industries, and audiences, all related
through textual strategies and structures.
In Chantal Akerman’s 1976 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du
Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a classic of feminist and experimental
cinema, extended scenes in real time present a woman doing house-
work. The film restricts itself to three days in the life of a Belgian
widow who is shown doing household chores in meticulous detail and
routine. Part of this routine is her work as a prostitute (which is more
discretely represented) but eventually on the third day she kills her
client after they have had sex, ostensibly to reconstruct the order of
her life. What interests us here are the long representations of house-
hold work (in a film that lasts three hours and twenty minutes) which
amount to a unique instance of description in the history of film.
These long takes in their descriptive valor obviously serve the de-
mands of realism. In fact, the precise attention to detail makes the
film seem almost like a science experiment, as Vincent Canby, the
noted New York Times film critic, has written: “Miss Akerman re-
cords three crucial days in the life of Jeanne Dielman (Miss Seyrig) as
if she were observing the habits of some previously unknown insect.”
However, as in the previously discussed example of Magdalena
Viraga, in Ackerman’s film, too, descriptive scenes are not ‘merely’
descriptive (i. e. enhance the reality effect) but rather create a discon-
certing atmosphere. Although in this case the scenes present relatively
profane situations, audiences have typically reacted to them with un-
rest or anger, emotions that are evoked by the formal means em-
ployed. As Vincent Canby remarks:
Like its blunt title, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles, deals in unadorned facts. It’s about the looks and sounds of
ordinary things and people, which it records with such precise, unsettling clarity
that it has the effect of finding threats in mundane objects and doom in common-
place characters. (1983)
Beyond the heightened, perhaps excessive, duration of the descriptive
scenes the filmmaker also used distancing devices which break the
comforting rules of mainstream narrative cinema and its concurrent

ideological constructions. Janet Bergstrom has pointed out a distinc-
tive feature of Jeanne Dielman:
One of the aspects of Akerman’s visual style that was most noted was the separa-
tion she maintained between the visual field occupied by the camera, which she
has often equated with her own view, and the field observed by the camera. There
is an absence of the conventional shot/reverse-shot rhetoric of editing and a
skilled use of ellipsis that emphasises the separation of these two fields. A choice
has been made not to draw the viewer into the psychological depths of dramatic
verisimilitude. (1999)
Thus, the suggestive and upsetting character of Jeanne Dielman’s
highly descriptive scenes combined with the distancing focalization
reveals the constructed nature of description. In simple terms: highly
realist (descriptive) takes here serve to destroy the reality effect. This
renunciation of realist conventions bars identificatory potentials and
exposes the concomitant ideological effects.
8. Conclusion
As the example of Jeanne Dielman has shown, description is far from

being a neutral term in film. While often in the service of realist con-
ventions, it can also be employed to deconstruct and question these
conventions and their effects on the viewing subject. The functions of
description in film therefore depend on how the descriptive is
constructed, i. e. on the filmmaking techniques employed, chiefly
among them camera positioning, framing, editing styles – all of which
add up to the question of focalization and the construction of specta-
torial positions. This fact may go a long way towards explaining why
film studies has rarely picked up the issue of description as such but
has, for example, preferred to analyze ‘the gaze’, which involves
questions of authorial position, the construction of hierarchies of
looks within the film, and questions of audience (in particular the tex-
tual construction of spectatorial positions)11.
11
The best starting point for an examination of this aspect is still Mulvey (1975/
1992).
234 Klaus Rieser
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Age of Photography. Austin: U of Texas P.
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Oxford UP. 302-312.
Bergstrom, Janet (1999). “The Innovators 1970-1980: Keeping a Dis-
tance”. Sight and Sound. (Nov.).
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Arnold.
Bordwell, David (1985/1988). Narration in the Fiction Film. London:
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— (1974). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York:
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Filmography
À bout de souffle (1960) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Jean-Paul
Belmondo, Jean Seberg.
Année dernière à Marienbad, L’ (1961). Dir. Alain Resnais. Perf.
Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff.
Citizen Kane (1941). Dir. Orson Welles. Perf. Joseph Cotton, Dorothy
Comingore, Agnes Moorehead.
Dead Man (1995). Dir. Jim Jarmush. Perf. Johnny Depp, Gary
Farmer.
Empire (1964). Dir. Andy Warhol.
How the Myth Was Made (1977). Dir. George C. Stoney.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976). Dir.
Chantal Akerman. Perf. Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri
Storck, J. Doniol-Valcroze.
Koyaanisqatsi (1983). Dir. Godfrey Reggio.
236 Klaus Rieser
Magdalena Viraga (1986). Dir. Nina Menkes. Perf. Claire Aguilar,

Nora Bendich.
Man of Aran (1934). Dir. Robert J. Flaherty. Perf. Colman ‘Tiger’
King, Maggie Dirrane, Michael Dirrane.
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Dir. Maya Deren, Alexander
Hammid. Perf. Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid.
Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926). Dir. Robert J. Flaherty.
Perf. Fa’amgase, Pe’a, Ta’avale.
Nanook of the North (1922). Dir. Robert J. Flaherty. Perf. Nanook,
Nyla, Cunayou.
Rear Window (1954). Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. James Stewart,
Grace Kelly.
Région Centrale, La (1971). Dir. Michael Snow.
Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon, La (1895). Dir. Louis Lumières.
Stage Fright (1950). Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Jane Wyman,
Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding.
Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d’un film tourné en 1964
(1964). Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Bernard Noël, Macha Méril,
Philippe Leroy.
Wavelength (1967). Dir. Michael Snow.
Description in Visual Media
Dürer’s Apocalypse as the Origin of the Western System of
Graphic Reproduction
A Contribution to the History of Descriptive Techniques
in the Visual Arts1
Johann Konrad Eberlein2
‘Description’ does not seem to be a term that fits into the context of the visual
arts, for in imitating reality they do not use writing, and therefore one should,
strictly speaking, use the term ‘depiction’, rather than pictorial ‘description’. Yet,
in the context of the present volume this would mean blurring the issue, for what
is in focus here are forms, medial techniques and functions of ‘description’ as a
general ‘cognitive frame’ which is notably opposed to ‘narration’, and in this con-
text ‘description’ and ‘depiction’ can be used as synonyms both in literature and
in the visual arts.
However, this contribution does not focus on the differences of description
and narration in the visual arts but on an important quality that is often attributed
to description; in the introduction to this volume it is even called its “main pur-
pose”, namely the “vivid representation” of “concrete phenomena”. In literature as
well as in the visual arts such “vivid representation” is often destined to produce,
or at least to support, aesthetic illusion. Such illusion is not only dependent on
cultural-historical contexts but also on certain techniques used in the visual repre-
sentations in the course of history. In the visual arts the ‘invention’ of central per-
spective in the Italian Renaissance was a milestone towards an intensified illusion
both for descriptive and narrative purposes. The present essay focuses on another
of such milestones, this time one that was developed by an artist of a northern
country, namely Dürer.
Present-day civilisation is dominated by the digital image, which,
when perceived as (amongst other things) a descriptive medium, may
be considered as one among the systems of graphic reproduction
Western civilisation has developed since the Late Middle Ages.
Walter Benjamin already traced the evolution of these systems up to
1
Shortened version of a talk given as part of the lecture series “Description in Lit-
erature and Other Media” on May 3, 2006 in Graz. I would like to thank Werner Wolf
for the invitation to take part in the lecture series and Johanna Aufreiter, Julia Feld-
kellner, Elisabeth Sobieczky and Edgar Lein for valuable suggestions on the topic.
The current text takes up ideas from my own publication on Dürer (cf. Eberlein 2003/
2006: 38-46).
2
Translated by Katharina Bantleon.
240 Johann Konrad Eberlein
his own time – from woodcut through copper engraving, lithography

and photography to film (for details cf. Eberlein 1998). From a
medium-oriented perspective, the systematics of pictorial reproduc-
tion by graphical means can be traced even further back. Recent evi-
dence suggests that these were already inherent in medieval minia-
tures and possibly date as far back as ancient handicrafts (cf. Eberlein
1995).
From an alternative point of view, which is not exclusively
medium-oriented and does not necessarily perceive of pictorial re-
production systems as having developed from one another genealogi-
cally, the publication of Dürer’s Apocalypse marks the decisive water-
shed moment after which the aforementioned systems started to de-
velop towards what we would nowadays consider medial reproduction
with a maximum of descriptive and illusionist power. ‘Mechanical
reproduction’ (“mechanische Reproduzierbarkeit”), as defined by
Benjamin, is nowadays determined by two expectations: On the one
hand, the reproduction system should enable unproblematic replica-
tion and consistent reproducibility. On the other hand, the reproduc-
tion itself ought to provide the means necessary for the beholder to
envisage what is reproduced in a way that does not detract from the
aesthetic illusion. Bearing this in mind, we can isolate a specific point
in time as of which these demands have been increasingly met: 1498,
the year which marked the appearance of Dürer’s Apocalypse (cf.
most recently, also for a list of relevant older literature, Schoch/
Mende/Scherbaum, eds. 2002: 59-105).
Firstly, I shall outline what was novel and yet particular to these
illustrations that would account for their importance in the history of
pictorial reproduction (cf. Panofsky 1977: 66-78). Dürer’s woodcuts
did not only span the divide between the Middle Ages and the
Modern Era in terms of content-related descriptive accuracy resulting
in a new richness in detail, but also in terms of their fictional quality.
This becomes apparent when comparing them with earlier Apocalypse
illustrations3. Dürer’s anonymous predecessors had already employed
the basic graphic elements, contour and hatching, although without
subjecting them to a coherent, over-arching descriptive purpose. Be-
fore Dürer, these graphic elements complemented each other while,
on the whole, remaining largely independent. Contours were used to
3
Respective parallels are listed with the catalogue numbers in Schoch/Mende/
Scherbaum, eds. (2002).
Dürer’s Apocalypse - Origin of the Western System of Graphic Reproduction 241
set off certain areas without being involved in creating a depth effect.
Hatching was reduced to more or less schematic lines, following the
contours in the manner of brush strokes and contributing little to
plastic modelling. The ideal underlying this artistic practice remained
line woodcuts that were subsequently coloured in.
Dürer’s achievement was to unify contour and hatching into a
homogeneous system in which they function as the constituents of
light and shade effects. Dürer endowed the line with a hue, refined
and enriched it, made it livelier, and gave it copper engraving’s bulg-
ing and thinning qualities. The hatching lines also gained in supple-
ness. Thus, on the basis of their realistic appearance and quality, drap-
eries became the bearers of emotional expression. Plane areas were no
longer automatically evenly enclosed. Dürer introduced darker sec-
tions against which lighter elements could be silhouetted as three-
dimensional, plastic shapes. In the works of his predecessors, the in-
dividual picture elements had appeared on a white background like
stamped-out shapes on a baking tin. Yet, Dürer used the whiteness of
the paper as the print’s lightest shade as opposed to its darkest that he
achieved through very closely spaced cross-hatching lines, between
which the printing ink is partly impervious. This allowed for contours
to blend with a darker ground, which greatly enhanced the possibili-
ties for shading. Dürer’s Apocalypse illustrations represent a mile-
stone in the development of the dimension of depth in woodcut. In
merging paper ground and images, Dürer liberated the paper from
functioning as a mere plane upon which picture elements were placed.
This allowed images to develop an optically independent existence
which nowadays defines our understanding of graphic rendering.
In refining woodcut, Dürer followed the model of copper engrav-
ing which had already been elevated to a high artistic and technical
level by the most famous graphic artist before Dürer, Martin Schon-
gauer (ca. 1450 – 1491). Dürer, however, greatly surpassed Schon-
gauer in two respects: in terms of the line and in terms of the ground.
Schongauer’s hatching lines were subjugated to pen-and-ink line
drawing and therefore remained determined by their subjective devel-
opment. They were thus often executed as small ticks. With Dürer,
these elements became increasingly abstract and turned into freely
employable technical means. His hatching lines were quasi objective
and showed no direct reference to the artist’s own hand, thus uniting
the line with the requirements of the depicted image. The second dif-
ference between Schongauer and Dürer lay in the treatment of the
ground. Not unlike the aforementioned anonymous woodcutters,

Schongauer still treated the paper ground as a plane on which he laid
out his scenes. He, thus, would regularly leave part of a print’s white
paper ground to represent the sky in outdoor scenes. In Dürer’s works,
however, the plain, empty paper ground completely disappeared, al-
lowing for the entire print to be read as a spatial illusion.
It is for these reasons that Dürer’s Apocalypse illustrations may be
termed epoch-making. They introduced into Western civilisation a
system of graphic depiction whose means were capable of evoking on
paper, without a sense of loss to the beholder, every possible object in
the same way and with a high degree of descriptive accuracy by way
of light-dark plasticity and colour contrast. In terms of technical re-
production, the system was easy to handle and allowed for anything to
be depicted and rapidly conveyed. Woodcut became the illustrative
medium par excellence both for descriptive and narrative purposes.
The development and proliferation of technology would have been
unthinkable without it. Mankind learned to recognise objects in the
changeable relations between printing ink and paper ground and
acquired a certain way of seeing which developed into a common
ground for understanding. Ultimately, the nuances of shaded paper, or
the contrast of light and dark created by more or less closely spaced
dots, sufficed to make objects identifiable. It was then that graphic
reproduction ceased to merely aim at making ‘images’ (in the sense of
sources or models) reproducible by mechanical means. Their addi-
tional aim became to impart the optical illusion of what was being re-
produced, which, in nuce, marks the birth of photography and thus of
all other media up to the computer screen, whose technical fictions we
could not perceive of as optically true had it not been for the step
taken by Dürer.
Dürer’s illustrations quickly achieved unparalleled success. His
pictures have fundamentally shaped mankind’s idea of the apoca-
lypse. He did everything in his power to promote his own work.
Dürer’s Apocalypse is a book containing the text of the Apocalypse
(prefaced by Hieronymus) and fourteen illustrations, which Dürer
himself called ‘Figuren’ (‘figures’) (see Illustrations 4-17). These are
preceded by “The Martyrdom of St John” in the same format (see
Illustration 3). The book first came out in 1498 in a German and a
Latin version, in both of which the titles consisted of printed words
only – in German: “Die heimlich offenbarung iohanis” (‘The Secret
Revelation of St John’, see Illustration 1) and in Latin: “Apocalypsis
cum figuris” (‘The Apocalypse with Figures’). A second Latin edition

was published in 1511, in which the title was enriched with a small
woodcut depicting the Madonna appearing to St John (according to
contemporary belief) (see Illustration 2). The format of the book is
the large, so called ‘Superregal’, measuring 38 x 30 cm, in which
Schedel’s Chronicle of the World (Liber Chronicarum, 1493) had also
been printed. For the German Apocalypse, Dürer used a Gothic
typeface, an early stage of the Schwabacher, and for the Latin edition
the so-called great Rotunda. Both had already been in use in the
Koberger workshop, where we also find the subdivision of the text
into two columns.
Dürer is likely to have cut the plates and distributed the books
himself. The designs were organised in such a way that both text and
illustrations could simultaneously be clamped into the printing press.
For the first time, each woodcut bore the artist’s signature. At the end
of the Apocalypse, we find the following annotation: “Gedruckt zu
Nürnberg durch Albrecht Dürer, Maler, nach Christi Geburt 1498”
(‘Printed at Nuremberg by Albrecht Dürer, painter, 1498 AD’). From
an art-sociological point of view, Dürer’s Apocalypse may be con-
sidered the modern period’s first great work of art in which the artist
was personally responsible for all aspects of production and distribu-
tion. Dürer left behind the medieval division of labour and carried out
all artistic as well as business-related tasks himself.
It has often been argued that Dürer’s time was receptive to apoca-
lyptic visions; that during the Late Middle Ages Dürer’s contempo-
raries had perceived of recurring epidemics, the Turkish threat or
locust infestations as omens of God’s apocalyptic plagues, or even as
those plagues themselves, and that there had been a prevailing fear of
the approach of the year 1500, the turn of the epoch (cf., e. g., Cottin
2003: 90). This argument, however, would be more sustainable had
Dürer dated his work 1500 rather than 1498. Moreover, it has recently
been shown that the concept of the medieval fear of epochal dates was
apparently a projection of the nineteenth century (cf. Brendecke
1999). Attempts to interpret Dürer’s illustrations as an apocalyptic
critique of his times have so far remained unsuccessful4.
This, however, should not call into question the fact that Dürer
shared a common level of understanding with his contemporary audi-
4
This especially applies to the publications by Chadraba (1963) and Perrig (1987)
(cf. Schoch/Mende/Scherbaum, eds. 2002: 63).
ence. His determination to actualise the biblical text in order to inten-

sify the impact of his illustrations is obvious. He paid attention to the
most modern details, dressed his female figures in the most recent
fashion, and placed the action in landscapes resembling the Central
German Uplands with distinctively Franconian features. Furthermore,
he made the magnitude of the pending apocalyptic threat tangible by
also portraying the powerful and rich as its victims.
Against a humanist background, the striving for actualisation and
accuracy were hallmarks of the time. In accordance with the humanist
focus on sources, Dürer adhered more closely to his sources than his
predecessors. Based on a close reading of the texts, all his illustra-
tions exhibit a remarkable closeness between the image and the textu-
al narration.
Yet, this does not imply that Dürer valued the text higher than the
image. On the contrary, the Apocalypse illustrations even reversed the
pre-existing intermedial relationship between text and image. In
medieval illustrated books the text had been dominant, while the
miniatures had merely filled the spaces left empty by the scribes (cf.
Eberlein 1995: 128), whereas Dürer transferred the main thrust of the
meaning from the written word to the image. Determining their own
rhythm, his ‘Figuren’ (‘figures’) form a continual, coherent flow,
while the text appears disorganised, if not confusing. At the ends of
the text columns, which differ in length, there are running references
to the ‘figures’ on the opposite pages, whereas the references within
the text jump accordingly. The text is no longer predominant in the
book’s layout, typographic design, or in its relation to the image.
Dürer also reduced the dominance of the text as a source in that he, in
the fullness of his own creative powers, took it upon himself to com-
bine several different text passages into one image while leaving out
other passages altogether. Thus, when considering the illustrations as
an exegesis of the text, Dürer’s artistic practice can be seen as an im-
plicit reflection on the theologian’s duties.
This freedom is a precondition for the medial quality of Dürer’s
illustrations. He created his ‘pictures’ effectively on the basis of his
own designs, into which he incorporated stimuli from earlier Apoca-
lypse illustrations. He then realised these ‘pictures’ by making use of
the reproduction systems outlined at the beginning of this contribu-
tion. His inspiration to do so dated back to his first journey to Italy in
1494/1495, during which he acquired the method of correct spatial
depiction, somewhat loosely referred to as aerial perspective (‘Luft-
perspektive’). This method can be illustrated with reference to a quote

from the Venetian scientist Giovanni Fontana (ca. 1395 – after 1455),
who wrote a book on Jacopo Bellini (ca. 1400 – ca. 1470) that was
subsequently lost (cf. Thorndike 1931). However, Fontana has sum-
marised the content of his book in a few sentences:
I have described how he [Bellini] was able to apply dark and light colours with
such a technique that not only parts of a picture that were painted on a plane ap-
peared elevated but also that, moreover, the depicted figure seemed to stretch a
hand or foot towards the beholder, and that, on the other hand, all humans, ani-
mals or mountains depicted on the same plane appeared as if some miles distant,
etc. Namely, the art of painting teaches that what is near should be painted in
light, what is distant in dark, and what is in the middle with mixed colours5.
The graphic system of Dürer’s Apocalypse is based on the intention to
depict, through shades of light and dark, the transformation an object
undergoes with changes in light. As Dürer succeeded in conveying
different degrees of visibility solely through the use of the inked line,
the hitherto common practice of subsequently colouring prints could
be dropped.
Abandoning colour had an important theological dimension at the
time, as one of the most enduring and dangerous arguments brought
forth by Christian theologians, who were hostile towards the painted
image, was that art fooled the beholder by using colours and thereby
creating something that does not actually exist.6 This can be verified
by a number of examples. Vitruvius (first century B. C.) had already
objected to the squandering of colour in fresco painting7. Gregory of
Nazianz (308 – ca. 390) drew parallels between (positive) simple peo-
ple and simply coloured pictures as well as between (negative) overly
sophisticated people and a way of painting that applies “floridis et
nusquam umbrosis coloribus”8 (‘flourishing and in no place dark col-
5
This and all subsequent translations from Latin as well as from German are those
of the translator of this contribution. “[...] descripsi, quibusque modis colores
obscuros et claros apponere sciret, tali cum ratione, quod non solum vnius imaginis
partes releuatae viderentur in plano depictae, verum extra manum vel pedem porrigere
crederentur inspectae, et eorum, quae in eadem superficie hominum animalium vel
montium equantur quaedam per miliaria distare apparerent atque eiusmodi. Ars
quidem pingendi docet propinqua claris, remota obscuris mediaque permixtis sub
coloribus tingi deberi.” (Fontana 1544: Book 3, chapter 13 [wrongly 14]: n. p.).
6
For what follows cf. Eberlein 1995: 143-145.
7
Cf. Book VII, 5, 8 in: Vitruvius Pollo 1964/1976: 356f.
8
Poemata de seipso XI, De vita sua, 739-754 in: Migne, ed. 1857 – 1866: 1220.
ours’). Isidore (570 – 636) criticised the evocation of mirages by

means of colour9. Hrabanus Maurus (780 – 856) spoke of “falsche
Malerei der Farben”10 (‘deceptive painting in colour’), as did, in a
similar way, the Council of 754 (cf. Weitmann 1997: 137f.). William
of Malmesbury (ca. 1080 – ca. 1142) commented on the seductive
power of crimson colours (cf. 1870: 69f.). Bernard of Clairvaux (1090
– 1153) condemned the fact that the most colourful pictures were the
most popular ones11, a line of argument also supported by Nicolaus
Cusanus (1401 – 1464) (cf. Hempel 1977: 7). The very fact that Dürer
replaced colour with an arrangement of black and white lines was at
the centre of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s famous eulogy, which we shall
come back to.
In this, Dürer’s concern with contemporary theology reappears, as
becomes apparent from Erasmus’ statement, albeit with a change in
focus from mere theology towards a theological assessment of aes-
thetic questions.
Subsequently, I shall discuss the question of how Dürer dealt with
the issue that the images of the Apocalypse were in fact visions.
These visions, and hence their pictorial description, would not mean
an identification and vivid representation of experiental realities as in
so many descriptions, but an evocation of imaginary phenomena. The
visions belong to another world, albeit one which occasionally im-
pinges ominously upon the world of the living. In order to create a
pictorial difference between the heavenly and the earthly spheres, and
in his strife for the greatest possible affinity to nature, Dürer drew
upon an old stratagem: the ‘Wolkensaum’ (‘cloud fringe’). Having
developed from the aureole surrounding Christ Pantocrator, this motif
had already been used in Carolingian illuminations and could be
transferred to other heavenly apparitions12. Dürer uses this device to
differentiate between the spheres of heaven and earth, and it is
interesting to examine all fifteen Apocalypse illustrations in terms of
this aspect.
“The Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist” (see Illustration 5) is
set on earth and no ‘cloud fringe’ is evident. This is remarkable, for
9
Cf. Et. 19, 16 in: Isidore 1911: n. p.
10
Carm. 38, 4-7 in: Dümmler, ed. 1884: 164.
11
Cf. Apologia 12 in: Bernhard of Clairvaux 1963: 105.
12
E. g. in the Vivan Bible (Paris BN Lat. 1, e.g. f. 329v) or in the Gospel Book of
Lothar (Paris BN Lat. 266, e. g. f. 171v).
Dürer, recognisable by his hook-nosed profile and the cutting knife,

has portrayed himself as an onlooker in the foreground (cf. Oettinger
1971: 1832). (The supposed) St John the Evangelist is both witness
and author of the vision, while Dürer appears merely as an observer of
the earthly event. He does not, like Hildegard of Bingen in one of the
so- called Lucca Codex miniatures, witness the vision itself.
The first ‘figure’, “St John’s Vision of Christ and the Seven Can-
dlesticks” (see Illustration 4), is set amidst clouds. St John is kneeling
in the lower foreground upon a flat layer of naturalistic clouds spread-
ing to the front and to the left, where they are intersected by the mar-
gins of the print. They ascend along the left and right picture margins,
creating a space above God the Father. Yet, that space does not
resemble an opening, since it is bordered by a dark ‘cloud fringe’
merging with the darkly hatched borders of light clouds. The entire
scene is a ‘cloud picture’ and as such it need not be set off against an
earthly zone.
In the second ‘figure’, “St John and the Twenty-four Elders in
Heaven” (see Illustration 5), the celestial scene flows from an open
gate. The circular group of figures is enclosed by a ‘cloud fringe’ both
from above and, more pronouncedly, from below. Outside the fringe,
Dürer suggests thunder, lightning, and voices emanating from the
throne of God. In witnessing all this, St John is placed upon a bulge of
cloud, below which none of the aforementioned elements appear.
In the third ‘figure’, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (see
Illustration 6) are carrying out their ghastly work on earth, while at
the same time emerging from a vision, which is part of the celestial
sphere. This is indicated by a frilled ‘cloud fringe’, which is still dis-
cernible on the left while diffusing into broad cloud formations that
dissolve towards the right. On the upper left, lightning bolts, perhaps
reminiscent of the previous ‘figure’, emerge from an opening between
two ‘cloud fringes’. In the white wall of clouds, darkening behind
him, a flying angel is guiding the horsemen.
The fourth ‘figure’, depicting the “Opening of the Fifth and Sixth
Seals” (see Illustration 7), contains two ‘cloud fringes’. The group of
divine figures dressing the martyrs is separated from the lower part of
the picture by a frilled ‘cloud fringe’ broadening in the middle as it
rises upward from the earth in a triangular formation. It thus appears
like a reversed funnel from which the stars fall down to earth. Cloud-
like forms surround the divine grouping on both sides beneath the sun
and moon, perhaps illustrating the displacement of mountains and

islands from their appointed positions.
The fifth ‘figure’, set on earth, shows “Four Angels Staying the
Winds and Signing the Chosen” (see Illustration 8). The sky is filled
with frilled ‘cloud fringes’ as well as with actual clouds. These cloud
formations form the backdrop for the four winds, whose anthropo-
morphised heads appear to partly grow out of them.
The sixth ‘figure’ depicts how “The Seven Trumpets are Given to
the Angels” (see Illustration 9). There are several kinds of clouds in
this illustration, each having a distinct function. Above his out-
stretched arms, God the Father is surrounded by the usual thin ‘cloud
fringe’, which creates a white space behind his shoulders and head.
However, corresponding shapes, adumbrated in some distance to the
left and right, suggest that the ‘cloud fringes’ are actually two broad
bands of clouds spreading downward. Below, we can distinguish two
groups of clouds. Despite thin ‘cloud fringes’ suggested at their edge,
these cloud structures, as a whole, form the ground from which the
two frontmost angels are signalling to earth. Hailstones and fire mixed
with blood rain down from the right section of the clouds.
“The Battle of the Angels” in the seventh ‘figure’ (see Illustration
10) is set on earth. In the background there is a mountainous land-
scape and a bay with a natural cloud floating above. The celestial
zone is divided from the rest of the picture by a half-round ‘cloud
fringe’. This, in turn, is divided into individual sections below and
opens for the horses to emerge and bring doom over the world.
The eighth ‘figure’ depicts how “St John Devours the Book” (see
Illustration 11). The angel, whose descent to earth is traceable by a
band of clouds, which also add a certain anthropomorphic dimension
to the angel’s appearance, is pointing towards the altar on the upper
left, encircled by an aureole. There are several thin frilled ‘cloud
fringes’, which, however, continually expand into rounded actual
clouds or broad bands of cloud. “The Woman Clothed with the Sun
and the Seven-headed Dragon” in ‘figure’ nine (see Illustration 12)
belong to the earthly sphere. Above them, the half-figure of God the
Father is surrounded by a ‘cloud fringe’ dissolving into the white
paper ground. However, on the periphery, this ‘cloud fringe’ features
black outlines in some places, behind which more clouds appear on
the lower right. The tenth ‘figure’ depicts “St Michael Fighting the
Dragon” (see Illustration 13). The group of angels surrounding the
archangel is interspersed with very thin, frilled ‘cloud fringes’. The
heaven above the earthly scenery is cloudless, that is to say, white.

“The Sea Monster and the Beast with the Lamb’s Horn” in ‘figure’
eleven (see Illustration 14) both move upon earth. Above them, God
the Father as the central figure is surrounded by an aureole that
merges into a frilled ‘cloud fringe’ expanding to the lower left and
right into actual clouds raining fire. The twelfth ‘figure’ depicts “The
Adoration of the Lamb and the Hymn of the Chosen” (see Illustration
15). A frilled ‘cloud fringe’ broadening towards the left correctly sep-
arates the congregation of the chosen from the earthly zone and from
St John kneeling on a hill.
“The Whore of Babylon” in ‘figure’ thirteen (see Illustration 16)
is seducing the humans on earth. Above her, the angels in the centre
of the picture are bordered by a ‘cloud fringe’ on the left, which ex-
pands into actual rounded clouds, while on the right new clouds
emerge from the conflagration raging in Babylon. On the far left,
Christ’s army appears from a strait, formed by the aforementioned
‘cloud fringe’ and a second one meandering upward along the left
margin of the print. “The Angel with the Key to the Bottomless Pit”
in ‘figure’ fourteen (see Illustration 17) is standing on terrestrial
ground and no clouds are depicted.
What is the structure behind Dürer’s implementation of the ‘cloud
fringe’ as a motif? In depicting ‘cloud fringes’ and bands of clouds as
realistically as possible, he ‘naturalises’ this traditional artistic means
of separating the heavenly and the earthly spheres. The ‘cloud
fringes’ frame the scenes set in heaven. They open up when heavenly
events draw near to earth, while being entirely absent in exclusively
earthly scenes. There is a clear distinction between the pictures in the
clouds and the earthly landscapes, which, in comparison, are more
summary and carried out with less medial suggestiveness. In the
landscapes, the big step Dürer took with the Apocalypse, as has been
explained above, is not as pronounced as in the ‘cloud pictures’. In
the scenes depicting regions of the Franconian Central German Up-
lands such as the ‘Walberla’13, the paper ground remained clearly rec-
ognisable in a rather backward manner and is thereby suggestive of
the sun shining or of snow having fallen upon the scenery. This is,
however, not the case in the prints that are entirely set on earth, as for
example the eighth ‘figure’, “St John Devouring the Book”. The pic-
13
A monadnock north-east of Forchheim, which repeatedly appears in Dürer’s
works.
torial realisations of these scenes meet the standard of the celestial

images, as if the ‘cloud pictures’ had virtually descended to earth.
The fact that Dürer furnished all scenes encircled by ‘cloud
fringes’ with their own aesthetic quality allows for them to be termed
‘Wolkenbilder’ (‘cloud pictures’). That is not to be understood in the
sense of figures or shapes emerging from cloud formations, but in the
sense of scenes that are set in the clouds. Why has Dürer chosen this
technique?
Firstly, it should be noted that, as a device, the ‘cloud picture’ also
stems from the Italian tradition. There is a frequently quoted example
in Renaissance painting: Andrea Mantegna’s ‘horseman in the cloud’
(see Hauser 2001 for details). In a small painting of St Sebastian,
probably executed around 1460 in Padua and now kept in the Kunst-
historisches Museum in Vienna, Mantegna depicted a horseman who
is formed by, and emerges from, the highest cloud floating above the
protomartyr (see Illustrations 18 and 19).
While an interpretation of this rider has proved difficult, its
traditional sources have largely been traced back to two strands: one
is based on the ability of the human eye to discover in indistinct struc-
tures – such as clouds, rock faces, or the like – distinctly identifiable
objects – above all, heads or faces. This phenomenon was mentioned
by Lucretius, Philostratus, and Michael Psellos as well as by Pliny
and Cicero. In sixteenth-century painting, heads of angels emerging
from cloud structures were so abundant that quoting individual exam-
ples is unnecessary.
However, Dürer’s celestial scenes are obviously not in accordance
with this strand of the tradition, which does not even pertain to the
heads of the wind angles in the fifth ‘figure’. Dürer’s figures are
encircled or framed by ‘cloud fringes’, but do not emerge from them.
His practice, therefore, has to be seen in the context of the second
strand of tradition as to the depiction of phenomena in the clouds,
which perceives of apparitions in the clouds or in the air as reflec-
tions. Aristotle (384/382 – ca. 322/321) had already mentioned reflec-
tions in the sky in his Meteorology: ‘The apparitions in the air are, all
in all, partly mere reflections and partly have a true being.’14 He
thereby meant meteorological phenomena such as rainbows. In the
14
“Die Erscheinungen im Luftbereich sind, zusammenfassend gesagt, teils bloße
Spiegelungen, teils haben sie wirkliches Wesen.” (Aristotle 1970: 247; cf. also n. 312;
for the ‘cloud as a mirror’ cf. ibid.: 80 and n. 208).
fifteenth century, the reflecting quality of clouds or the air became the
subject of treatises on optic phenomena. Once more, Fontana can be
quoted in this context. His accounts – adopted from his teacher
Palacani – match the methodology applied in Dürer’s Apocalypse so
well that one could suppose Dürer knew the treatise:
The aforementioned Blaxius of Parma, who once was my teacher, tells that once
in his time in the year 1403 in Lombardy near the fortress called Buxetum, armed
horsemen and infantry appeared every day before the third hour over a period of
three days, fighting one another with lance and sword, and that those witnessing it
were very much alarmed as they did not know the reason for this abnormality.
This was happening because at a distance from this place, on a certain plane, there
were soldiers and infantrymen who the Duke of Milan had called together so that
they would go to Bologna in order to besiege it. And since there was a rain cloud
in the sky at that time, which received the picture of those moving armed men, the
people in other nearby places looking upon the cloud thought that war-faring
demons in the form of armed warriors existed in the air: they assumed that those
had got there unaided or by magical force. And a second time he [Blaxius] says
that in his time in Milan several angel-like images were able to be seen; some of
them seemed to want to descend to earth and some to ascend to heaven; some of
them had trumpets in their hands and some swords; everyone feared that God
wanted to announce judgment upon the world. However, later it was learned that
this had been a vision of fantastic things, because on the high and pointed tower
of St. Gotthard an angel was affixed, holding in his hands a trumpet and a sword,
which presented themselves in the aforementioned and water-laden cloud like in a
mirror. Through the movement of the cloud, the illusions were multiplied as in
moving water and appeared to be moving in various gestures. I have also read
myself that not only human and angelic figures appeared repeatedly in the air, but
also many other things like ships in stormy winds, or rowing ships, or fortresses
with towers, or fruitful gardens, or beautiful cities, vast dragons and chimera-like
monsters which had never been heard of. However, that this has happened due to
the reasons we have proposed can be seen from the events that very often precede
or follow the rainbow. I do not deny, as I have elsewhere clearly proved and
described, that this could also happen with non-magical force but rather be shown
through mere craftsmanship.15
15
Fontana 1544: Book 3, chap. 13 (wrongly 14), n. p.:
Recitat .n. Blaxius Parmensis, olim doctor meus, semel apparuisse tempore suo
anno gratiae .MCCCCIII. in Lombardia iuxta castrum quod dicitur Buxetum per
tres dies omni die ante horam tertiarum in nubibus equites et pedites armatos
cum lanceis et gladiis inuadentes se quibus perteriti nimium sunt inspicientes
causam nouitatis ignorantes. Acciderat .n. hoc quia distanter ab illo loco in
quadam planitie erant in armis milites et pedones, quos Dux Mediolani
conuenerat, vt ad obsidendam Bononiam accederent. Et cum tunc esset in aere
nubes aquosa recipiens similitudinem illorum armatorum se mouentium
homines existentes in aliis conuicinis locis, nubem intuentes iudicabant in aere
This account is so much in accordance with Dürer’s solution to the

problem of placing the events of the Apocalypse in the clouds that it
may be assumed he was familiar with the tradition Fontana’s lost
treatise represents, if not the text itself16. This assumption might also
apply for Mantegna’s ‘horseman in the clouds’ who, despite being as
such formed by clouds, cannot clearly be separated from the mirage
tradition.
Dürer may have encountered this northern Italian tradition during
his travels. If that was the case, and Dürer ‘rationalised’ the appa-
ritions of the Apocalypse as mirages, this not only marked a step to-
wards a new, realistic quality of the medium, but also showed how
Dürer considered potential frictions with theological aesthetics. This
would also answer the question of why Dürer chose to test his newly
developed system on the Apocalypse, as opposed to a more pleasing
cycle of ‘pictures’.
Even more than the use of deceptive colours, contemporary theolo-
gians criticised the fact that artists depicted in their works things that
did not actually exists. The most frequently attacked example was that
Demones sub formis armigerum bellantes existere: sponte vel arte magica illuc
aduenisse. Et inquit iterum semel in ciuitate Mediolani visum fuisse tempore
suo imagines plures ad instar Angelorum: Quorum quidam videbantur ad terram
velle descendere, et quidam ad coelum salire: Quidam eorum habentes tubas et
quidam enses in manibus: quasae si Deus volens promouere iuditium mundi,
omnes pertimebant. Sed post cognitum fuit harum fantasticarum visionem
fuisse, quoniam in Turri sancti Gotardi alta et acuta erat Angelus quidam factus
cum tuba et ense in manibus suis, qui nubi prefatae et aquose velut in speculo se
offerebant (!). Motuque nubis sicut in aqua mota multiplicabantur ydola et
variis apparebant moueri motibus. Legi quoque ipse aliquotiens in aere
apparuisse nedum hominum et Angelorum figuras, sed et aliarum multarum
rerum et Naues ventis tumentibus et Galeas remigantes et Castra cum turribus et
viridaria pomiferia, et pulcherrimas ciuitates, Dracones immensos vltra modum
monstraque cimerica et inaudita. Sed eadem contigisse ratione quam
propalauimus, intelligere debes ad quas demonstrationes vt plurimum yris
percedit vel sequitur. Et non nego vt alibi clare deduxi, et scripsi arte fieri posse
etiam non magica, sed puro artifitio demonstrari.
The name “Blaxius Parmensis” refers to Biago Palacani da Parma. A 1428 transcript
of his “Quaestiones perspectivae” contains the source material for the passage in Fon-
tana (cf. Pfisterer 1996: 133, n. 104; Canova 1972: 30, n. 63; for further literature see
Hauser 2001: 152, n. 29).
16
For Dürer, perspective meant ‘Durchsehung’ (‘a looking through’) and it took
him long to acquire the skill of employing the central perspective (cf. Eberlein 2003/
2006: 85f.).
of ancient mythological creatures such as the centaurs. Thus, this crit-

icism also implied a rejection of pagan gods. Sources stating this posi-
tion, once more, go back to antiquity: Vitruvius rebuked adornment as
needless invention17 and Horace regarded centaurs and sea creatures
as examples of artistic licence18. Isidor used pictures of the Chimera
and Scylla to exemplify that painting was a lie19. The condemnation
of such creatures continued through the Middle Ages, for example in
the works of Bernard of Clairvaux20 or the English cleric who around
1200 wrote the Pictor in carmine “ad modernadam … pictorum
licentiam”21 (‘to govern the painters’ liberty’). However, in accord-
ance with Horace’s views, the Renaissance witnessed a positive
revaluation of the concept of artistic licence, for instance in the works
of Cennio Cennini. In this context the ‘cloud pictures’ in which the
images emerge naturally are of significance.
In the Apocalypse, creatures are described that are no less absurd
than centaurs, but were legitimised through the Bible, which is why
theologians could not criticise their depiction. From this perspective,
Dürer’s Apocalypse delivers an argument of great significance to the
theory of art.22 Through his Apocalypse, Dürer was able to demon-
strate his newly developed system of depiction and reproduction
which withstood all limitations of theological aesthetics.
Through the pictorial persuasiveness of his medial system, Dürer
was able to depict for his contemporaries a whole range of images –
from God to mankind, condemnation to salvation, war to peace, a
panoply of emperors, kings, prostitutes, peasants and monsters – in
such a way that they all seemed to actually exist23.
Thus it becomes apparent how important the word/image problem
was to Dürer. For him, its essence lay in the confrontation with the
17
Cf. Book VII, 5, 2-7 in: Vitruvius Pollo 1964/1976: 332-337.
18
Cf. De arte poetica, 1-10 in: Horatius Flaccus 1985: 538f.
19
Cf. Et. 19, 16 in: Isidore 1911: n. p.
20
Cf. Apologia 12 in: Bernard of Clairvaux 1963: 105.
21
Pictor in carmine, “Prologue” in: Delisle 1880: 206f.
22
This has already been noted by Blaise Pascal (see 1997: 227).
23
It could easily be shown that Dürer also employed the motif of the ‘cloud fringe’
in other works as a means of separating the supernatural and the earthly spheres. For
example in his copper engraving “Das große Glück” (‘The great happiness’) (Schoch/
Mende/Scherbaum, eds. 2001: catalogue number 33), in which the ‘cloud fringe’ ap-
pears almost ironic.
theologians. Focussed on the written word, Christian theology had

from the beginning been disinclined towards the ‘picture’ (cf. Krause/
Müller 1980, s. v. “Bild”). Pope Gregory was influential to the status
of the ‘picture’ in the Middle Ages.24 As pictures conveyed to the illit-
erate what they could not read in books, Gregory recommended
paintings to Bishop Serenus of Marseille, who was hostile towards
imagery. The basis of this approach was not the mnemotechnical
function of paintings, but that of the sermon. Pope Gregory’s idea was
not for the faithful to look at paintings for their beauty, which would
have been superficial, but for the message they conveyed. They were
for the illiterate ‘to see what they should follow’: “vident quod sequi
debeant”25. This legitimised the ‘picture’, without, however, detract-
ing from the supreme importance of the written word. Yet, during the
Reformation, Gregory’s ideas regarding paintings were recanted.26
Zwingli and Karlstadt gave the same precedence to the written word
as had Hrabanus Maurus. In the view of the Reformation, God wanted
to be worshiped spiritually. ‘Writing’ regained the direct connotation
of the spoken word, but now in the form of the sermon juxtaposed
with the earthbound image, the depiction of the flesh.
Throughout his life, Dürer feared the Christian theologians’ ver-
dict regarding pictures (cf. Eberlein 2003/2006: 142f.). As a devout
Christian, this concerned him beyond his role as an artist. For Dürer,
reformatory tendencies turning hostile towards images seemed like a
repetition of early Christianity’s destruction of ancient art. He, there-
fore, felt the need to liberate art from the ideological conflict it was
involved in by turning it into a practical and scholarly matter, so that
it could be wielded as purely and objectively as an instrument.
Dürer’s aim was to protect art – widely perceived of as false pretence
– from iconoclastic attacks, which it was helpless against as long as
its products depended on the fortuitous artistic skills of its creators.
While this was the case, pictures were bound to lack artistic objec-
tivity due to their low depictive quality. Dürer was therefore inter-
ested in improving medial reproduction and accuracy. He succeeded
in concentrating artistic depiction into the black and white rendering
of woodcut, thereby nullifying the theologians’ criticism of the ‘de-
ceptiveness’ of colour, whose differentiation in intensity his line
24
For what follows cf. Eberlein 1995: 102-108.
25
Cf. Reg. L. 8-14 in: Gregorius 1891: 270.
26
For what follows cf. Dugan 1989: 237.
structures were capable of conveying. This becomes apparent in

Erasmus’ aforementioned eulogy of Dürer:
But Apelles used colour. His colours were admittedly restricted in number and the
reverse of flamboyant, but they were colours nonetheless. Dürer, however, apart
from his all-round excellence as a painter, could express absolutely anything in
monochrome, that is in black lines only – shadows, light, reflections, emerging
and receding forms, and even the different aspects of a single thing as they strike
the eye of the spectator. His harmony and proportions are always correct. Above
all, he can draw the things that are impossible to draw: fire, beams of light, thun-
derbolts, flashes and sheets of lightening, and the so-called clouds on the wall,
feelings, attitudes, the mind revealed by the carriage of the body, almost the voice
itself. All this he can do just with lines in the right place, and those lines all black!
And so alive is it to the eye that if you were to add colour you would spoil the
effect. It is surely much cleverer to be able to dispense with the meretricious aid
of colour that Apelles required and still achieve the same results as he did.
(Erasmus of Rotterdam in: Sowards 1978: 399)
Through Dürer, mankind learned to perceive of the visible as a phe-
nomenon that could be furnished with spatial depth, i. e., to associate
all things with the aspect of their potential optical mediation by way
of graphic representation. This also included those things that did not
yet exist, the plans and concepts to be put into practice in the future,
just like the Apocalypse, which Dürer had envisaged as visible in the
present despite its lying beyond earthly time. It was thus that the
world became offered to the eye, at any time transferable into a
scientific-technical graphical depiction. Since then, the “diagram” (i.
e., schematic depiction) has embodied the promise of purity and
freedom.
What we call the Modern Era, characterised through aspects of
permanent conquest, exploration and Western civilisation’s intellect-
tual appropriation, was preconditioned by the adoption of Dürer’s
descriptive system. It is told in an account of the humanist Peucer that
Dürer claimed his art was capable of depicting that which, by ortho-
dox opinion, was undepictable:
Melanchthon was, back then, very often together with that Pirckheimer and
consulted with him in Nuremberg about questions concerning the church and the
school. Albrecht Dürer, the painter and learned man, was called in on these gath-
erings, whereat Melanchthon professed that even the most splendid paintings were
inane, and Pirckheimer and Dürer often argued about this question. When, in do-
ing so, Dürer, with the vigour of his mind, heftily attacked Pirckheimer and the
latter dismissed what he proposed, he went off like a fighting cock. Now Pirck-
heimer glowed […] and oft broke into the words: No, that cannot be painted. To
which Dürer replied: But that, about which you speak, cannot either be said and
not even thought27.
With his Apocalypse Dürer found the way to introduce and enforce a
graphical depictive and reproductive system with a maximum of de-
scriptive and illusionist power without evoking the opposition of tra-
ditional advocates of the importance of the ‘word’ before that of the
‘picture’. In this, he had to take into account their line of reasoning,
but not for long. Soon the ‘cloud fringe’ became unnecessary in set-
ting off naturalistically depicted phenomena from a natural earthly
environment. The success of these medial systems and their succes-
sors forced the advocates of the primacy of the ‘written word’ to find
new paths: in the age of Rembrandt, they tried to interpret the ‘written
word’ as a (spoken) ‘sermon’, thereby ‘silencing’ pictures (cf. Busch
1971).
Dürer’s ‘revolution’ in the field of graphic depiction could be used
both for narrative and descriptive purposes. He himself did so in his
illustrations of the Apocalypse, which in itself combines narrative
with descriptive visions. However, Dürer’s newly developed illusion-
ist technique may arguably be said to be of more importance for pic-
torial descriptions than for narrations. Narrations rely less on the con-
vincing representation of phenomena as such, and more on their plau-
sible and ‘readable’ relation to one another in order to suggest or
evoke a story, while descriptions are by their very nature vivid repre-
sentations of phenomena as they appear to our senses. In this sense,
Dürer contributed substantially to empowering his pictorial medium
to do precisely this: to vividly suggest that the objects depicted are
‘there’ and can be experienced as if they were real. Dürer therefore
occupies a pre-eminent position in the history of descriptive tech-
niques in the visual arts.
27
“Mit diesem Pirckheimer war damals Melanchthon sehr oft zusammen und beriet
sich mit ihm in Nürnberg, über Fragen der Kirche und der Schule. Zu diesen Zusam-
menkünften wurde Albrecht Dürer, der Maler und gelehrte Mann, hinzugezogen, wo-
bei Melanchthon ausführte, daß selbst die hervorragendste Malkunst nichtig sei, und
über diese Streitfrage kam es oft zu Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Pirckheimer und
Dürer. Wenn dabei Dürer in seiner Geistesstärke heftig Pirckheimer bekämpfte und
jener das von ihm Vorgebrachte ablehnte, so ging er los wie ein Kampfhahn. Nun er-
glühte Pirckheimer [...] und oft brach er in die Worte aus: Nein, das kann nicht gemalt
werden. Darauf erwiderte Dürer: Aber das, wovon du redest, läßt sich auch nicht sa-
gen, und nicht einmal denken.” (Peucer in: Lüdecke/Heiland 1955: 46)
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Illustrations
Illustration 1: Albrecht Dürer, Title Illustration 2: Albrecht Dürer, Title

page of the Apocalypse’s 1498 German page of the Apocalypse’s 1511 Latin
edition edition
Illustration 3: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 4: Albrecht Dürer, “St

Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist” John’s Vision of Christ and the Seven
Candlesticks”
Illustration 5: Albrecht Dürer, “St John Illustration 6: Albrecht Dürer, “The

and the Twenty-four Elders in Heaven” Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”
Illustration 7: Albrecht Dürer, “Open- Illustration 8: Albrecht Dürer, “Four

ing the Fifth and Sixth Seals” Angels Staying the Winds and Signing
the Chosen”
Illustration 9: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 10: Albrecht Dürer, “The

Seven Trumpets Are Given to the An- Battle of the Angels”
gels”
Illustration 11: Albrecht Dürer, “St Illustration 12: Albrecht Dürer, “The
John Devours the Book” Woman Clothed with the Sun and the
Seven-headed Dragon”
Illustration 13: Albrecht Dürer, “St Mi- Illustration 14: Albrecht Dürer, “The
chael Fighting the Dragon” Sea Monster and the Beast with the
Lamb's Horn”
Illustration 15: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 16: Albrecht Dürer, “The
Adoration of the Lamb and the Hymn of Whore of Babylon”
the Chosen”
Illustration 17: Albrecht Dürer, “The Illustration 18: Andrea Mantegna, “St
Angel with the Key to the Bottomless Sebastian” (ca. 1460). Kunsthistorisches
Pit” Museum, Vienna
Illustration 19: Detail from Andrea Mantegna, “St Sebastian” (see Illustration 3)
“Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium”?1
Description in the Visual Arts
Götz Pochat
A verbal description is always related to a corresponding cognitive frame. This is

also true of the visual arts, where the mode of representation is, however, further-
more subjected to conventional codes of representation to which the recipient is
expected to respond. With regard to the mimetic arts, the recipient will succumb
to illusion by way of projection, e. g. through imagination. As phenomenology
has shown, this process of conjuring up the (absent) signified object involves
viewer identification, an emotional response, and recollection. The question of
why certain (art-historical) periods feature specific motifs and why the public has
been willing to accept those motifs, is a sociological one. Yet it has to some extent
been answered by iconology, which deals with the respective cognitive cultural
frames, while the qualitative aspect of depiction reflects the transformation of an
object perceived and conjured up in the artist’s mind. Description is always the
outcome of a mental process, yet in contrast to processes triggered by verbal
description and communication, the mode of (descriptive) representation in the
visual arts appears more closely related to limbal faculties of the brain. In both
cases the final outcome oscillates between the reference and the referent as en-
compassed by the mind.
Description is, no doubt, as stated by Wolf in his introduction to the

present volume, a mental concept, a cognitive frame. The cognitive
frame, however, according to Paul de Man, may show cracks2. A
metaphor, describing an object or person, referring to a specific sig-
nificance, is embedded in a cognitive framework; but the properties of
a person or object described by way of attributions, which is, for in-
stance, the case in metonomy, may prove to be haphazard, even more
so when the signified in question is subject to a process of self-
reflexive deconstruction. Hence, within the context of description, the
1
St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica I, qu. I art. 9, c (‘Corporeal Metaphors of
Things Spiritual’).
2
The arbitrariness of meaning is discussed by Paul de Man (1979), especially in
unmasking the uncertainties of metaphor compared to metonomy.
266 Götz Pochat
cognitive frame is always at risk3. If we take for granted Wittgen-

stein’s characterization of description as “a basically anti-metaphysic-
cal and language-centred epistemological programme”, as opposed to
explanation, there is still no guarantee that the characteristic qualities
attributed to an object will withstand a closer examination (Wolf in
this volume: 11). All the same, as a participant in this interdiscipli-
nary debate, I assume that description itself, which is to be analysed
here, will turn out to be no more and no less than the universal ability
of man to establish connotations to omnipresent cognitive frames,
description itself being one in case.
Jacob Burckhardt once complained that the art historian, in trying
to describe a certain work of art, only manages to encircle it. He never
arrives at the heart of the matter, owing to the ineffable process of
artistic transformation. This puzzling fact of creativity and mimesis,
the making and matching, has been discussed at length by Gombrich
(1960/1968), at the end leaving him baffled by the ‘wonder of simul-
taneity’; this seems to be confirmed by recent research in neuro-
biology (cf. Singer 2002) – visual communication addresses a realm
of consciousness which is less related to discursive logic than to
deeper layers of emotion and expression situated in the pre-cortical
limbal structure of the brain (cf. ibid.: 224). Maybe the use of meta-
phors in poetry, after all, helps to bridge the gap between the visual
arts (the representation of objects) and the poet ‘thinking in pictures’
– using images as a means of literary expression.
The three basic functions of the descriptive in literature and other
media as listed by Wolf in his introduction to this volume (see 12)
are:
a) description as a means of identifying objects and phenomena and
referring to them for communicative purposes by means of char-
acteristic attributions,
b) as a means of vividly representing objects and phenomena to the
recipient,
c) as a means of approaching reality in a seemingly objective way
rather than as a means of explanation and interpretation.
These basics are also relevant with regard to aesthetics.
3
The role of Paul de Man as a representative of demonstration in aesthetics has
been summarized by Kern (1998).
Description in the Visual Arts 267
The everyday function of description as identification through at-

tribution with special regard to absent phenomena is very much the
same in the realm of the visual arts. Panofsky speaks of the primary
or natural subject matter and the act of interpretation referring to it as
pre-iconographical description (cf. 1939/1962). The problem aris-
ing here is that even in case of a plain description, the mode of repre-
sentation is inextricably linked to convention and tradition both from
the artistic point of view and with regard to the spectator. Any kind of
communication in everyday life presupposes a constant process of
identification, a make-believe that encompasses the willingness of the
recipient to succumb to illusion: listening to a narration or perceiving
an object appearing as ‘real’ in a painting – the psychological readi-
ness to adjust the mental set in order to internalize the object de-
scribed seems to be much the same (cf. Gombrich 1960/1968: 190).
The experience referred to by Wolf in this context, is much en-
larged if we turn to phenomenology and the distinctions made by
Franz Brentano, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and others (cf. Husserl
1969; Merleau-Ponty 1945; Keller 1964: esp. 64; Gorsen 1966;
Pochat 1984, and Pochat 1996: 7-26).
The primary retention signifies the immediate recognition or
identification of a represented object. The secondary retention harks
back to former experiences, actualized and represented as a whole, a
recollection of contexts in the past (see Husserl 1969: 16). A further
distinction is made by Husserl, as the primary recollection does not
only include identification of objects and persons but also the emo-
tional response attached to them; the secondary recollection, on the
other hand, not only represents a former mental situation but also
distinguishes the present state of mind as distinct from the former
content actualized in the mind. The consciousness of this ambivalence
is characterized as “phantasy of mind” (‘Phantasiebewußtsein’ – cf.
Husserl 1969: 48, and Pochat 1996: 15). Recollection in this wider
sense is a sine qua non of creative reproduction, affecting the mind as
a whole. This emergence in phenomenology may be traced back to
Romanticism and even further, to the processes in the mind as dis-
cussed by Locke and Hume. Later on, Coleridge in his Biographia
Literaria (1817) dwells upon the distinction between Fancy and
Imagination – the first defined as “Memory blended and modified by
Choice; Imagination dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recre-
ate” (Coleridge 1817/1907: chapter 13).
268 Götz Pochat
So far, at this stage of discussion, we are still dealing with the

ordinary kind of memory and description of objects which are experi-
enced but absent and therefore substituted by description. But here,
too, it proves almost impossible to draw a clear line between object
and experience – is there such a thing as an objective description?
The stronger a verbal or illusionistic description, the more we are
inclined to yield to the suggestiveness of the representation. The
painter in former times was regarded as a magician, a mediator
between reality and the observer by way of mimesis (cf. Kris/Kurz
1934/1980: 89-120). Is there a psychological difference between a
vivid description by Thomas Hardy, as cited in Wolf’s introduction,
and a painting by Constable (cf. Wolf: 7 and Illustration 1)?
Illustration 1: John Constable, “Wivenhoe Park” (1816; detail). National Gallery,

Washington
As an analysis of descriptions shows, description in most, if not all,

cases – be they of a verbal or pictorial nature – transcends the state of
a mere reproduction. The components of most descriptions are chosen
from a reservoir of memories, decomposed and put into place again in

a new construction of a world, referred to by Coleridge as ‘Imagina-
tion’. Thus, even life-like descriptions contain an element of construc-
tion rather than of re-presentation, but I agree that explanation and
interpretation have nothing to do with it – on the contrary, they rather
counteract description as such. If, with regard to literary description,
Riffaterre therefore speaks of its primary function as being “to dictate
an interpretation”, the formal aspect of how something is described is
adumbrated (Riffaterre 1981: 125).
The analogous case of practical representation in the visual arts
(form, colour, expressiveness, etc.), however, does obviously not play
any role in Riffaterre’s consideration of a ‘meaningful construct’. In
my opinion, the formal ‘meaning’ on this level of pre-iconographical
description and experience is just what painterly description is all
about. Van Gogh, for instance, makes us ‘see something’: the pungent
yellow or the power of ultramarine in his “Wheat Field with Crows”
(1890).
This pre-iconographical description and the practical experience
related to it, dealing also with formal aspects and aesthetic apprecia-
tion, in some cases coincides with the general aspect of Panofsky’s
intrinsic meaning or symbolical value of a piece of art within the
cultural context on the whole (cf. Panofsky 1939/1962: 7). With re-
gard to still-life painting, for instance, the iconological question is not
necessarily concerned with a specific meaning revealed by descrip-
tion, but rather investigates the value of such pictorial descriptions
within a specific cultural context. Obviously, the strong demand for
still-life paintings in seventeenth-century Dutch society provided the
financial basis and means for a widespread specialization in this field
of painting. The fundamental question arising, as to whether a certain
tradition of representation may lead to specific expectations, selective
perception and widely accepted aesthetic norms, cannot be discussed
here, but has been dealt with at length by Gombrich. The sociological
explanation of an anthropological phenomenon may, however, turn
out to be a deadlock reminiscent of the insoluble question about the
hen and the egg. Svetlana Alpers has written a most influential book
with the challenging title The Art of Describing (1983), dealing with
description as the essential impetus and aspect of Dutch painting in
the 17th century (1985: 4-146). Francis Bacon, Huygens, Kepler and
Comenius were the champions of the empirical conquest of reality
270 Götz Pochat
and the exact description of natural phenomena. The astronomer and

the geographer, as represented by Vermeer in two famous paintings in
Paris and Frankfort, by profession encompassed the field of natural
sciences of the age – map-making was explicitly addressed as
Descriptio mundi. The artist held a prominent place in society as an
expert in pictorial representation less concerned with the quantitative
aspect of the cognitive frame ‘description’, but rather with the quali-
tative aspect of ‘depiction’. Jan Vermeer’s famous painting “The
Painter in his Studio” (1665/1666, Illustration 2) serves as a brilliant
example in the line of Alpers’ argument (cf. Alpers 1985: 213;
Sedlmayr 1960).
Illustration 2: Jan Vermeer, “The Painter in his Studio” (1665/1666). Kunsthisto-

risches Museum, Vienna
As described by Ripa (cf. 1604/1970: 346), the woman with the attrib-
utes of laurel, a trumpet and a book represents the allegory of History,
i. e. Clio, but this interpretation is weakened by her strong physical
presence, the allegory brought back to life by acute observation and a
phenomenal technique. Painting itself, the conjuring make-believe,
may be seen as the self-referential object of the masterpiece – a recon-
struction of the intimate world of the studio, reflecting the everyday

life of the busy painter, who, himself a part of the setting, is depicting
his model’s laurel on the canvas and thus appears as master and
subject matter of the actual painting. Light is transformed into colour,
defining the objects and closing the gap between reality and the
réaliser on the canvas, enhancing the visual quality of experience,
leaving the spectator astounded by the strangeness of an interior at
first glance classified as familiar. Description, as practised by Ver-
meer, is not a mirror of visible reality but of the mind of the artist at
work. This complex subject touches the core of artistic creativity,
representing and transforming the world vu à travers un tempérament.
The true subject of the painting – cognition as a frame – is here
located in the realm of otherness, reflecting the autonomy of mind.
The spectator stands at the threshold of a room which he perceives but
will never enter.
Description is not an end in itself, but nonetheless an indispens-
able means of communication, in the realm of art and aesthetics as
well as with regard to cognition. In fact, Alpers and many scholars
with her have paid attention to the spectacular map of the Netherlands
covering the wall in the background. With utmost precision Vermeer
re-presented an actual map, of which one copy has been preserved in
Paris (Illustration 3; cf. Welu 1975 and 1978; Alpers 1985: 213).
Illustration 3: Detail from Jan Vermeer, “The Painter in his Studio” (see Illustration
2) with the printed Map by Claes Jansz Visscher. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
272 Götz Pochat
The rendering of the northern and southern parts of the country hints
at the historical time passed, the country itself being the result of a
long historical process with intimations of a lost past and the potential
glory of future society. Clio, the personification of History, stands
between the painter and the map, which shows the art of mimetic
description in its most prestigious form but, at the same time, exem-
plifies a highly complex abstraction. In fact, the word Descriptio on
the upper border of the map denotes a geographical representation of
the world, ending up in a conceptual form of depiction. Many artists
were surely involved in the investigative conquest of the visual world
with all its scientific, commercial, and political implications. On the
lateral borders of the map a series of topographical views of Dutch
cities is shown within the frames of the cartouches – actualizing the
tradition of topographical representation, which in Holland became a
popular genre of painting itself (cf. Alpers 1985: 264). The depiction
of authentic cityscapes reached its climax with Vermeer’s “View of
Delft” (Mauritshuis, Den Haag; Illustration 4).
Illustration 4: Jan Vermeer, “View of Delft” (c. 1660). Mauritshuis, The Hague
The distinction between the accurate topographical description on the

verge of a scientific representation, making use of the camera obscura
and other devices responding to demands of a cognitive kind, and the
cognitive, abstract description of the map is, in the first place, a ques-
tion of function and social expectation.
The veduta in the eighteenth century can be gauged either way.
Canaletto was held in high esteem, not only as an outstanding painter,
but perhaps even more so by the English gentry having their castles
and the prestigious sites of their estates depicted (cf. Links 1982: 145-
180; Links/Baetjer 1989: 223-255). The commissioners certainly fo-
cussed primarily on the accurate description, and it took the genius of
Constable to escape from the straight-jacket of this demand.
Vermeer is only one of many painters reflecting upon description
and the vital role of mimesis in the process of artistic realization. The
wish to conjure up by means of a perfect illusion has been a constant
theme in literature and ekphrasis since antiquity (see Pygmalion’s
dream), the utopian quality of this dream notwithstanding. An inter-
esting painting by Magritte has come down to us, showing the artist
depicting his model, representing her as a real person in space, liber-
ated from the canvas she would normally merge with (Illustration 5).
The paradoxical nature of miraculous fiction is commented on in the
title: “Attempting the Impossible” (cf. Sylvester 1992: 148).
Illustration 5: René Magritte, “Attempting the Impossible” (1928). Toyota Museum,

Nagoya/Japan
274 Götz Pochat
So far, I have dwelt upon some aspects of iconic description, waver-

ing between the representation of things, absent and unseen, and the
encounter with the world as reflected in the artefact. The examples
chosen make it clear that even the iconic description and identifica-
tion of simple objects tells us plenty about the general conditions
promoting the choice of motives and the mode of representation.
Moreover, the micro-genres cannot be separated from the general
frame, which in the visual arts, in my opinion, differs from the cogni-
tive macro-mode aimed at by verbal description and communication. I
will here discuss the arguments put forward by Wolf in his introduc-
tory statement on “descriptions in the pictorial medium (painting)”.
The “typical class of signs”, at first envisaged, concerns the simple
identification of “objects as static and spatial”. According to Wolf, a
pictorial medium such as painting appears to have a very high descrip-
tive potential, whereas the experience of its objects “requires only a
relatively low degree of recipients’ share […], since it permits the be-
holder to experience these objects in a way that is much closer to real-
life perception than is the case, e. g., in written literature” (Wolf: 39).
While Wolf focuses on a comparison between pictorial and verbal
media, one must emphasize that without such a comparative focus it
would be a simplification to relate painting to perception. In fact, such
a simplification would obscure the complexity of the matter from a
neuropsychological point of view and, moreover, would not do justice
to the mental processes involved in mimetic representations and their
mental reproduction on the part of the beholder. When hearing the
sentence, ‘the horse is rearing’, as well as when looking at a drawing
that shows a rearing horse, the brain of the recipient is triggered and
his mind starts reproducing the event hinted at and the circumstances
related to it. The word is not moving, nor is the depiction, but they are
experienced as dynamic, suggesting a movement. The function of
description, be it in words or in an image, is referential. Confusing a
depicted object – illusionistic and spatial as it may appear – with
reality is less probable, ‘impossible’ as Magritte asserted.
I agree with Wolf that the amount of information stored by the de-
piction of a tree would require a never-ending, quite tiring ekphrasis –
the simultaneity of iconic representation can conjure up an image
which looks as diversified and rich as phenomena in nature (see Illus-
tration 6).
Illustration 6: Camille Pissarro, “Gardenview from Pontoise” (1917). Louvre, Paris
But the process of making and matching is regulated by norms and

techniques related to the medium alone, the outcome of a longue
durée and personal skill (cf. Gombrich 1960/1968: 126-152). The
readiness of the spectator to respond to lines and dots, to ‘read’ these
codes as descriptions and references to real objects, is astonishing
indeed, and bears witness to the capability of a high degree of abstrac-
tion. I therefore venture to say that the ‘beholder’s share’, consciously
or not, is always operating at a high level. The dynamics of percep-
tion have been scrutinized for a long time, especially by Arnheim with
regard to the visual arts, and the phenomenon of projection itself had
been reflected upon even long before. The blottings by Alexander
Cozens may serve as an example (Illustration 7; cf. Cozens 1785/
1786)4.
4
The specific method of investigation of Cozens is discussed by Werner Busch (cf.
1993: 337-354). Further aspects of the dynamics of perception have especially been
dealt with by Rudolf Arnheim (cf. 1972, 1974 and 1978).
276 Götz Pochat
Illustration 7: Alexander Cozens, “Blot Nr. 11” (1785/1786). British Museum, Lon-
don
Wolf has formulated the provocative question ‘whether there are any
pictures at all that are not descriptive’. Of course, all mimetic pictures
are descriptive in a simple way, notwithstanding the fact that they
consist of abstract, codified micro-signs put together in order to repre-
sent a certain motif. The pull of illusion indeed proved to be so strong
as to serve as a common denominator in the visual arts for about 800
years. Kandinsky stands at the end of this development, and his own
artistic career bears witness to the struggle of liberation while elimi-
nating mimesis. Yet in “Composition IV” from 1911, referred to by
Wolf, there are still traces of mountains, towers (the ‘Kremlin’),
riders, horses, battles, couples – lines and clusters of colour, intimat-
ing a world pervaded by a ‘sounding cosmos’, standing at the brink of
autonomy and self-referentiality – lines, colours and volumes, indexi-
cal traces of emotional response (Illustration 8; cf. Brucher 1999:
350-372).
Modern art is directed towards the world within, an emerging
structure and harmony hitherto unseen and unheard of, coming into
being – a revelation born out of the artist’s mind. Less a description, it
is true, but rather a divination of a spiritual kind, as stated by

Kandinsky himself in his book Über das Geistige in der Kunst, like-
wise from 1911. Also the pittura metafisica aimed at the Great
Spiritual ‘sub metaphoris corporalium’.
Illustration 8: Wassily Kandinsky, “Composition IV” (1911). Kunstsammlung

Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Even if there is such a thing as ‘abstract art’ – let us consider

Mondrian as another representative –, description does not completely
disappear there either, despite being directed towards structure and
energetic planes of colour, which, according to the artist, represent
underlying principles in nature and the cosmos by way of analogy.
The knowledge which arises in descriptions of abstract art is as differ-
entiated as that of mimetic art. We may compare Jackson Pollock’s
‘gestic painting’ (see Illustration 9) with Barnett Newman’s “Vir
heroicus Sublimis” (1958/1959), which cannot be defined by a one-
way reference to well-known motifs and concepts, but rather as a
deictic approximation toward expression, reflecting the state of the
artist’s mind (cf. Newman 1996: 179). Boehm has discussed the con-
vergence of processual abstract art and ekphrasis with regard to the
deictic, making the spectator see what has been brought to light (cf.
Boehm 1995: 23-40).
278 Götz Pochat
Illustration 9: Jackson Pollock while ‘drip painting’
Wolf rightly speaks of a minimum of representationality required to

evoke illusion and narrativity (cf. Wolf in this volume: 40). Giotto’s
fresco of the “Flight into Egypt” in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova
(about 1305 A.D.), is referred to as an example of a “schematic, low-
degree landscape description” (ibid.: 42; see Illustration 10). It is true
– mountain forests were certainly “not among the main interests of
[the] painter” (ibid.: 42). But on the other hand, an application of our
standards of illusion may prove fallacious. As spectators we have the
possibility and ability to ‘adjust our mental set’, as Gombrich puts it.
Compared to fresco-painting in the late thirteenth century, Giotto
certainly embarked on an illusionistic adventure undreamt of before.
At the same time, description as a means of illusion is never pushed
beyond a certain point; it is rather balanced and even reduced, due to
other artistic considerations.
Illustration 10: Giotto, “Flight into Egypt” (1305). Scrovegni Chapel, Padova
Mother and infant, riding on the donkey, occupy the centre of the
square, according to Arnheim, the least dynamic position of an object
on a plane – intimating stability and certainty5. The group is further
stabilized by the mountain peak looming in the background. At the
same time, Giotto had to represent a passing moment – the donkey
and the other protagonists ‘move’ across the picture plane from left to
right. The position of the lines and the torsion of the bodies, not to
speak of the foreshortened angel showing the way, certainly evoke
this effect – Wolf later on concedes “a particularly large share of the
recipients’ imaginary activity” while experiencing movement in
bodies (ibid.: 44). The effect of transitoriness is further enhanced by
the companion just entering the picture on the left, or the contour of
Joseph overlapped by the framing border on the right. Depth in space
is hinted at by the smaller and darker mountain to the left. The
dominant sweeping contours of the mountains falling down diagonal-
ly from left to right enhance the forward pull of the group, especially
5
Structure and dynamics of perception have been dealt with by Arnheim through-
out his life. Cf. for instance Die Macht der Mitte (1982). As for Giotto, Imdahl has
brought earlier discussions to an unexpected revival (cf. 1980).
280 Götz Pochat
accentuated by the right arm of Joseph who is about to vanish out of

sight (cf. Imdahl 1980: 49; Pochat 1996: 249). The position of the
tree-trunks, stabilizing verticals or slight diagonals, also indicates
both stasis and movement. A raising diagonal from left to right – the
arm of the companion, the bridle and the neck of the donkey,
culminating in Josef’s head and shoulders – serves as a counterpoint,
indicating the direction of the protagonists. All of this is effectuated
within the square of the fresco, which never gives up its specific
character being an iconic structure restricted to a plane. The indexical
hints are incorporated into a calculated, apparently simple order
which turns out to be highly complex. We are confronted with a
formal deictic frame, an icon corresponding, by way of analogy, to the
true subject matter: “The Flight to Egypt”, transitory, yet fixed. For
these reasons I cannot see why paintings, as asserted, have “obvious
limitations in realizing […] the temporal frame of representation par
excellence, namely narratives” (Wolf in this volume: 44).
Although restricted to the representation of single events and spe-
cific objects, references to the past or to the future within a narration
are abundant in the visual arts. Temporality, in fact, is a constitutive
part of representation, mimetic and expressive, as well as of percep-
tion. The depiction of a verbal story in art may be called intermedial,
but most of the stories themselves are related, in their turn, to concep-
tual frames of a more general kind. This is also the case in pictures.
Bialostocki talks about general human topics as iconographical
‘framing themes’ (“Rahmenthemen”, see Bialostocki 1966). As for
religious motifs and biblical texts, these meta-frames serve as a sine
qua non of any story told or represented, and the description or repre-
sentation itself is, in the end, also related to the exegesis, or, in the
profane context, to an implicit moral lesson. Detailed information on
single objects and constellations refers to concepts and events, repre-
sented by visual objects, figures, signs and symbols. Description,
thus, is not only restricted to the presentation and identification of the
motives enumerated. They serve as vehicles as well, i. e. as references
to a referent of a more general kind. Wolf has given us a good exam-
ple of this in his analysis of Wüest’s “Rhône Glacier when looking
north-east” from 1772/1773 (Illustration 11, cf. Wolf in this volume:
47f.).
Illustration 11: Johann Heinrich Wüest, “The Rhône Glacier when looking north-
east” (1772/1773). Kunsthaus, Zurich
The minute figures in the foreground reflect different attitudes and re-
actions in the observer himself. As he is caught by the overwhelming
dimensions and the force of the scenery, the painting mediates awe,
enjoyment of the spectacle, and the actual representation of the
panorama by an artist. The ‘reception figures’ are shown as reacting
to Nature. The referent, in their case, is not located in the landscape,
but rather their state of mind, revealed by gestures and the like.
Whereas Burke stressed the physical conditioning of fear and terror,
Wüest seems to take sides with Diderot and Kant here, relegating the
282 Götz Pochat
Sublime to the realm of psychology6. Even in this landscape painting,

which is not primarily narrative, the motif itself and the minute fig-
ures represented suffice to direct attention to a conceptual frame re-
flecting aesthetics.
The analysis of Giotto’s “Flight into Egypt” concerned the formal
structure as related to the represented narrative. The second layer of
Panofsky’s iconology not only dealt with the content of ‘images,
stories and allegories’, but also with the question of how a picture can
refer to an action unfolding in time. Description here also functions as
a reference to a conceptual frame. During some periods of cultural
history there was a tendency even to imbue single objects with a sym-
bolical value – the locus classicus of Thomas Aquinas has deliber-
ately been chosen as the title to this paper: spiritualia sub metaphoris
corporalium (Summa Theologica I, qu. I art. 9, c). The problem of
‘disguised symbolism’ (Panofsky) emerging in early Netherlandish
painting arises from the fact that the minute description of a con-
temporary interior is packed with objects, the referential function of
which is sometimes hard to prove. Iconographical tradition helps to
clarify the significance (cf. Panofsky 1971: 1242).
The Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin (about 1425; Metropoli-
tan Museum, Cloisters, New York; Illustration 12) may here serve as
an example: the pot with the lilies on the table refers to the chastity of
the virgin, as do the laver and basin as substitutes for the ‘fountain of
gardens’ and the ‘well of living waters’. The lions in the armrest of
the bench refer to the Throne of Solomon (I Kings X, 18 ff.), a simile
of the Madonna as Sedes Sapientiae. The candle on the table may
signify Christ – Christus […] est candela accensa (Spec. hum.
salvationis, chap. 10), though the extinction, according to Panofsky,
could refer to the notion of St. Bridget that the mother by the radiance
of Light Divine became “reduced to nothingness” (Panofsky 1971:
142).
6
As for the different aspects of the Sublime as stated by Burke, Diderot and Kant
see Pries 1989: 1-90; Pochat 1986: 419-423, 451-452, 513-517.
Illustration 12: Robert Campin, “The Annunciation” (Mérode Altarpiece; 1425).

Metropolitan Museum, Cloisters, New York
In the Lucca-Madonna by Jan van Eyck (Städelsches Kunstinstitut,

Frankfort) about ten years later, we are confronted with the same
constellation, now, however, in a more restricted but highly illusionis-
tic representation of the interior. The motif of the Madonna lactans is
here combined with the illuminated glass carafe in the niche, referring
to the vision of St. Bridget, recapitulated by the Nativity Hymn:
As the sunbeam through the glass
passeth but not breaketh,
So the Virgin, as she was,
Virgin still remaineth. (Panofsky 1953/1971: 144; see also Meiss 1945)
284 Götz Pochat
The referent, made visible by description, in turn refers to a meaning

underlying the picture as a whole: the purity of the Virgin.
If we turn once more to the Mérode altarpiece, which represents
the crucial event of the Annunciation, we certainly deal with a narra-
tive subject. The extensive research devoted to this painting has prog-
ressed further since Schapiro and Panofsky. What moment of the
event has been chosen? Has the angel already announced to the Virgin
still reading in her breviary? The tiny depiction of the infant carrying
the cross and just intruding through the circular window to the left,
was normally accompanied by the dove of the Holy Ghost. Has he
already reached his goal? The sumptuous codex on the table has been
identified by Châtelet as the Exposition of Ludolph of Saxony on the
life of the Virgin (cf. Châtelet 1996: 102). Ludolph, in another text,
describes the descent of the Holy Ghost on the occasion of the Pen-
tecost in terms of a blowing wind. According to Bonaventura in his
Lignum vitae (c. 1250), the Holy Ghost “came over her like a divine
fire, inflaming her mind and sanctifying the flesh with the most
perfect purity. Then the virtue of the most High was infused into her
in order that she might be able to sustain such ardor.” (In Robb 1936:
523) We can thus conclude that the divine wind, or fire, has already
passed and extinguished the candle in doing so.
Illustration 13: Detail from Robert Campin, “The Annunciation” (see Illustration 12)
Reuterswärd drew attention to another indication of the occurrence:

the parchment folios of the codex (also dealing with the subject) have
been curled up as if having been exposed to great heat (Illustration
13; cf. Reuterswärd 1998: 47; Pochat 2004: 130). Previous stages of
the narrative are made visible, the incarnation itself is just about to
take place.
The cognitive limitations of narrative in the visual arts are
compensated by a wide range of references, located in the past or in
the future. Pictorial narrativity is endowed with a complexity which is
different but as diversified as in verbal narratives. An apparently
‘realistic scene’ and single motifs are saturated with meaning, though
we can never be sure to grasp them all, nor can we speak of the ‘one
and only’ intention behind them. Pictorial representations, ambiguous
as they may be with regard to narrativity and descriptivity, are, by
their own means, no less suggestive and far-reaching than their verbal
counterparts. Description as such is therefore – as well as narrative –
certainly a transmedial mode of representation, not restricted to verbal
texts, or pictures for that matter.
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Descriptive Images
Authenticity and Illusion in Early and
Contemporary Photography
Susanne Knaller
From the very beginning of, and far into, the 20th century the descriptive mode,
constitutive of the photographic medium, has not allowed a full integration of
photography into the art system. At the same time, the art system itself was far
from being homogeneous in the 19th century. On the contrary, it was defined by
different and even antagonistic programs such as Idealism and Romanticism, Re-
alism and Naturalism. In order to gain reputation, the photographic image imitates
traditional media such as painting, at the same time insisting on its own artistic
logic, within which the descriptive mode plays a decisive role. By discussing early
and contemporary photography in the context of aesthetic concepts such as au-
thenticity, appearance and illusion, this study offers a definition of the descriptive
mode in the context of the photographic image. At the same time, the analysis of
the descriptive mode allows new insights into the specific character of photogra-
phy itself.
1.
In the contributions to the lecture series which forms the basis of the
present volume, ‘description’ as a term for a basic mode of organizing
signs and thus a mode of communication (Werner Wolf) was defined
as an “interrelation of textual and extratextual information” (Ansgar
Nünning) and a “transmedial mode of representation” (Götz Pochat).
Werner Wolf differentiated between description as a macro-mode, or
a macro-genre, and description as a micro-mode (i. e. as part of works
and artefacts). Photography can be both. If we regard photographs as
realizations of the descriptive as a macro-mode, we are dealing with
an ideotypical construction, a typologisation of the medium. Thomas
Benton observed in 1922:
290 Susanne Knaller
Die Fotografie ist durch ihre mechanische Einrichtung ganz an natürliche Pro-
zesse gebunden. Sie gibt mit Hilfe des Lichts naturinhärente Qualitäten wieder.
Eher beschreibt sie, als daß sie interpretiert. Sie ist wissenschaftlich. (Benton in
Kemp 1999: 41f.)1
For Irene Albers, observation, documentation and description are se-
mantic characteristics of photographic features (see 2001: 542). Peter
Galassi talks about “photography’s talent of description” (2001: 10),
the camera can be used as a “means of description” (Campany 2003:
24). However, description can also structure the photographic picture
as a micro-mode, as a mode which characterizes certain picture genres
or picture motifs – “descriptive photography” (Galassi 2001: 25),
documentary photography, the scientific exposure, the photo-fit, etc.
The evaluation of photography as a factually descriptive medium is
based on media-specific attributes such as deixis and referentiality,
which assume that photography is based on objective, precise obser-
vation as its determining perspective. These assumptions hindered the
acceptance of photography as part of the art system far into the 20th
century. Pure description and the depiction of what stands in front of
you were regarded as adverse to art in the 18th, 19th and even 20th
centuries. The sense of composition and art can be found much more
clearly in invention and creation. In the 18th century, Gottsched, for
instance, distinguished categorically between mere description (copy
of reality) and “lebhafter Schilderey” (‘vivid depiction’) (1982: 142).
For Schiller, any dependence on an ‘external subject’ (‘äußerer
Stoff’) was an evil (cf. 1962: 399). For Schlegel, imagination is the
mainspring of the aesthetic which unfolds irrespective of what is lying
ahead, i. e., referentiality. Even for the structuralist Roman Jakobson,
literature does not obtain its meaning through a relationship between
text and world, nor through hetero-reference. The poetic function of a
text is quintessentially activated by text codes generated through self-
referentiality. This results in the text referring to itself and its form.
The view that hetero-referentiality and description are not constitutive
of art still lingers in many current theories and is mostly based on the
opposition of description and narration. The latter is attributed to the
demand for interpretation and interpretative representation, whereas
1
‘Photography, by its mechanical constitution, is completely bound to natural proc-
esses. With the help of light, it reproduces qualities inherent in nature. It describes,
rather than interprets, things. It is scientific.’ [My translation]
Descriptive Images 291
description is often regarded as a strictly hetero-referential form of

neutral observation which does not interpret or design the described
(see Jakobson 1960; cf. Stern 1990; Ronan 1997: 280f.).
Let us go back to the 19th century. Opposing the idealistic posi-
tions à la Schiller, realistic and naturalistic poetics propagated the
function of literature and painting as depicting reality where descrip-
tion and thus details, play an important role. Flaubert emphasised the
constitutive efficiency of description and explained in a letter to
Sainte-Beuve that there is not a single redundant description in his
book and that every single one of them has a bearing on the plot (in
Ronen 1997: 281). Zola defended the new descriptive, naturalistic
literature with recourse to Flaubert. In spite of these views, many
contemporaries continued to believe that, contrary to literature, photo-
graphy lagged far behind the literary form of description and was
classified as a pure copy. As photography is radically descriptive, it
was regarded as artless and as not belonging to the art system.
Baudelaire’s condemnation of the new medium that merely copies
nature is legendary. He opposed it to an art reflecting the impressions
and the imaginative creations of a ‘true’ artist. However, neither the
realists, who were accused of being literary daguerreotypists by Bau-
delaire, nor the critics took a clear stance in favour of the new me-
dium. On the one hand, they distanced themselves theoretically and
artistically from photography, while, on the other hand, they worked
with photographic motifs and metaphors in their texts. Champfleury,
for instance, rejected photography when it came to defending the
artistic quality of realistic art, yet fell back on it to define realistic
poetics (see 1856: 92). This ambiguous attitude did not significantly
change with naturalism. Zola, for instance, bridled at a continuous
photographic method and insisted on the author’s intervention. On the
other hand, he considered the author to be a kind of photographer: “Il
doit être le photographe des phénomènes: son observation doit
représenter exactement la nature […]” (1968: 1178)2. Photography
fulfils, without limitation, the claims for clarity demanded of realism,
a claim that is at the same time met by literary description, which in-
creases in importance in naturalism, in particular owing to the model-
ling of the author as a neutral, factual observer. The author becomes a
2
‘He must be the photographer of the phenomena, his observation must represent
nature precisely.’ [My translation]
292 Susanne Knaller
photographer, and the linguistic act of description is thus tied to a

palpable act of seeing. The naturalistic author is in so far
photographic-descriptive as he can reproduce a situation of objects
and subjects referentially, accurately, synchronically, and from an
objective-observational perspective. He thereby follows the scientific
ideal of positivism. This clearness and accuracy through description
are equated to photography. The immoralism, which Flaubert was ac-
cused of in court due to his objective narrative style that refuses to
moralise, was rejected by his defence lawyer with reference to the
photographic form: “[…] une fidélité toute daguerrienne dans la re-
production du type de toutes les choses […]” (Flaubert in Küpper
1987: 130)3. Joachim Küpper consequently defines the realistic
descriptive form, which was used in the texts following a reality-
depicting aesthetics, as a ‘merely registering description of the banal
everyday existence, where the principle of aesthetic and moral ideal-
izing has been abandoned’ [my translation]4. It is exactly this method
of renouncing selection which Nietzsche strictly disclaimed:
Es ist Selbst-Verachtung aber bei den Modernen […]. Was sie erreichen, ist Wis-
senschaftlichkeit oder Photographie d. h. Beschreibung ohne Perspektiven, eine
Art chinesischer Malerei, lauter Vordergrund und alles überfüllt. (1980-1999:
57f.)5
This comparison is confirmed, albeit from a favourable perspective,
by one of the inventors of photography, William Fox Talbot, who
claimed that the neutral camera would depict exactly what it sees and
register a chimney or a chimney sweep with the same impartiality as a
Greek statue.
If we take a look at 19th-century aesthetic theories, we find that
photography was positioned in a flux between the idealistic poetics of
genius and realistic referentiality. Hence it had to define its artistic or
medial status within a field of contradictory concepts, where the
artist/writer took on a problematic position: terms such as creative
3
‘[…] an entirely daguerreo-like fidelity in the reproduction of the type of all
things […]’. [My translation]
4
“[...] nur mehr registrierende, vom Prinzip der ästhetischen und moralischen Idea-
lisierung abgelöste Deskription der banalen Alltagsexistenz” (Küpper 1987: 58).
5
‘It is self-contempt, however, of modern artists […]. What they achieve is science
or photography, i. e., description without perspective, some sort of Chinese painting,
purely foreground and completely overcrowded.’ [My translation]
power, imagination, subjectivity, and originality were merged with

postulates of object authenticity and objectivity. When reproached
with the argument that he, the naturalistic writer, was merely a me-
chanical recording medium, passive and reproductive, he countered
this with the preference for a new concept of truth, which, based on
observation, allowed for objectivity and harmonised with extra-
literary discourses. In the following, I would like to examine the ques-
tion of how the descriptive, renditional and referential photographic
image does indeed fit into the art system and in what ways it changes
it. In order to do so, I correlate the defining concept of description for
photography with two termini which defined the artistic status of
artefacts in the 18th and 19th centuries: mimesis and appearance. These
terms can insofar be connected to description as mimesis and appear-
ance may, at least as aesthetic effects, evoke referentiality. In the 19th
century, the artistry of photography could only articulate itself in this
field of concepts.
2.
In the media paradigm of the 19th century, the invention of photogra-

phy caused a sensation reaching into all social, cultural and scientific
circles. At last it was possible to realise the arts’ and sciences’ long
cherished dream of the perfect rendition of reality as well as to per-
manently retain a copy of it. A photograph is the perfect copy of an
object. Moreover, the object can depict itself as the picture generates
itself. A contemporary critic referred to the “Lichtzeichnungen”
(‘light drawings’) or “Abdrücke” (‘imprints’) as nature and object
themselves (in Stiegler 2000: 25). Humboldt was thrilled by the ‘ob-
jects that paint themselves with inimitable fidelity’ [my translation]6.
Henry Fox Talbot noted that “it is not the artist who makes the
picture, but the picture that makes itself” (Talbot in Stiegler 2000:
55). Talbot’s Pencil of Nature is based on the concept of photo-
graphic self-depiction of nature. In painting and other pictorial media,
authenticity to life and affinity were regarded as an artistic quality
even before photography was invented. Yet it was not only the au-
6
“[...] Gegenständen, die sich selbst in unnachahmlicher Treue mahlen” (Humboldt
in Stiegler 2000: 22).
294 Susanne Knaller
thentic copy which was intriguing, but also the illusion of reality
connected with it. The aesthetic pleasure, in fact, lay in the recog-
nizing the illusion rather than in the illusion itself. Artistic quality
appeared in the perfection of realism. However, it was this very poet-
ological demand of mimetic illusionism or illusionistic mimesis which
excluded photography from the 19th century art system. Due to its
property as a technical medium reproducing objects and subjects with
unprecedented accuracy and sharpness, photography was considered a
merely scientific means of recording rather than an artistic medium.
In order to gain recognition as an art form, photography had to con-
front itself with mimesis as a mode of rendition and illusion as a value
and renditional effect, respectively. Existing conventions, as for in-
stance offered by the medium of painting, therefore lent themselves to
adaptation.Indeed, many artistically ambitious photographers of the
19th and early 20th centuries were geared to styles and motifs of
painting. Within pictorialism, for instance, this medial adaptation
became an aesthetic principle. Contrary to this move towards
adaptation, photography could also force a reformulation and
expansion of artistic determinative categories such as author and
work. The possibility of the technically and chemically based
recording and reproduction of segments of reality sustainably changed
the medial relation between subject and object. Photographic
perception modified the status of real objects just as it modified the
relation between perceiver and objects. Already at the beginning of
the 20th, century photographic art defined itself with reference to its
technical nature as well as to the distinctiveness of the photographic
view and the singularity of photographic reality.
Reality itself is subsequently not only a mediated, perceived
object, but also the mediated image, and no longer the mere object of
an image. In 1929, Max Picard denounced the “Photographierwelt”
(‘world to be photographed’), in which these objects, removed from
reality and thus separated from it, would ‘live’. Kracauer also contin-
ued to speak of a “Photographiergesicht” (‘face to be photographed’)
which the world has put on (see Picard 1932: 174; Kracauer 1977:
34). On the basis of such discourses concerned with photographic per-
ception, theorists not only dealt with the problem of mimesis, but pho-
tography also forced them into taking a perception-theoretical stand-
point which required medial awareness. This is why photography is
both hetero-referential as well as self-referential. Flaubert already
made this clear: “Il n’y pas de Vrai! Il n’y a que des manières de voir.
Est-ce que la photographie est ressemblante? Pas plus que la peinture
7
à l’huile […].” (in Stiegler 2000: 378) .
This was not without consequences for the concept of description.
It has several functions: Firstly, it has defined the photographic image
since its beginnings. Secondly, it is connected with the concept of
mimesis, because description is a handed-down method of rendition to
create mimetic illusions (see Ritzer 2004: 101). Thirdly, description
creates a notion of relation between hetero- and self-referentiality, as
description necessarily implies a semiotic process between perceiving
and presenting. Finally, the functions of description mentioned herein
and the semiotic conditionality of photography lead to a preference of
certain descriptive genres: portrait, street and architectural photogra-
phy count among the most important genres. Description in the con-
text of photography is thus relevant both as a term of definition as
well as a concept of rendition.
3.
I would like to begin the discussion of the photography-description-

appearance-mimesis paradigm with an analysis of the multi-faceted
notion of appearance. In principle, the aesthetic concept of appear-
ance deals with the relationship of art-reality-truth/universal and until
today has encompassed meanings which are derived from Greek ori-
gins (see Früchtl 2003: 367):
1) splendor or lumen (glow, shine)
2) phainomenon and apparentia (becoming visible, appear)
3) illusio (seeming) and tightly connected to
4) fictio (apparentness, as-if)
These four fundamental elements of meaning each show historically
and medially caused differences in accentuations, reductions or elimi-
nations in the terms which have developed over time. The three most
important ones are: aesthetic appearance, aesthetic illusion, and fic-
tion. Aesthetic appearance is an attribution and a value which has an
art-defining function. Aesthetic illusion is a category describing aes-
7
‘The Truth does not exist! There are only modes of seeing. Is photography mi-
metic? Not any more than oil painting […].’ [My translation]
296 Susanne Knaller
thetic effects. Fiction, finally, is a renditional and perceptional con-

cept, which has been increasingly used since the 1960s and refers to
medial, culturally conditioned constructs which can take on many
meanings in productive as well as receptive areas. The difference be-
tween reality and fiction/appearance is thereby often suspended.
All three forms, aesthetic appearance, aesthetic illusion and fic-
tion, are of significance to photography. I would like to commence
with a brief definition of aesthetic appearance, followed by that of
illusion, before returning to fiction.
The concept of aesthetic appearance emerged in the second half of
the 18th century in the context of Genieästhetik (‘aesthetics of genius’)
and the incipient development of an autonomous art system. Romantic
art in the broad sense is mimetic to the extent that it was still oriented
towards the autonomous laws of natural beauty. Yet, this beauty must
be ‘filtered’ through art in order to be useful for legitimizing art. Au-
tonomous art arises from the deviation to the non-artistic, societal,
and natural. The validity of art is produced by an author who estab-
lishes the composition as an autonomous carrier of validity. The artist
is a revealer; Novalis calls him “Messias der Natur” (‘Messiah of
nature’, 1960: 248). He becomes the guarantor of aesthetic distinc-
tiveness which refers to the universal. This poetic truth generates
itself by confining itself from all reality and takes on a life of its own
(cf. Petersen 2000: 204-212): Schiller claims that ‘the artist cannot
make use of a single element of reality the way he finds it […], his
work must be ideal in all its parts […] if it is to be realistic as a
whole.’ [My translation]8 In the ideal case it means the abolition of
the medial in favour of a seeming presence of infinity and the ‘idea’,
Hegel’s “sinnliches Scheinen der Idee” (‘sensuous appearance of the
idea’). The beauty in appearance, the apparent beauty, refers to the
apparentless, the idea. Deception is not impossible:
Die Poesie heilt die Wunden, die der Verstand schlägt. Sie besteht gerade aus
entgegengesetzten Bestandteilen – aus erhebender Wahrheit und angenehmer
Täuschung. (Novalis 1957: 374)9
8
“Der Künstler [kann] kein einziges Element aus der Wirklichkeit brauchen [...]
wie er es findet, [...] sein Werk [muss] in allen seinen Teilen ideell sein [...], wenn es
als ein Ganzes Realität haben [...] soll.” (Schiller 2004: 812)
9
‘Poetry heals the wounds that the mind inflicts. It consists of directly opposite ele-
ments – of elevating truth and pleasant deception.’ [My translation]
This refers to the effect of the independent appearance of beauty,

which is true in its sincere commitment to the appearance (see Schil-
ler 1989: 656f.). However, the deception/illusion is only acceptable as
appearance of beauty, not as deception as such:
Soll eine Nachahmung schön seyn, so muß sie uns ästhetisch illudiren; die obern
Seelenkräfte aber müssen überzeugt seyn, daß es eine Nachahmung und nicht die
Natur selbst sei. (Mendelssohn 1994: 166)10
The romantics’ aesthetic concept of appearance referring to the object
of art is based on the 18th-century reception-aesthetic concept of illu-
sion. During the Enlightenment and particularly in the Age of Sensi-
bility, aesthetic illusion was embedded in the context of the literary
ideal of naturalness and emotional appeal, an ideal which was consid-
ered reachable by way of simulating authenticity and factuality: this is
a rhetorical effect, which can be defined in terms of Roland Barthes
as ‘referential illusion’ (illusion reférentielle). As an example of a
successful effect of illusion, one may mention epistolary novels which
are allegedly based on real letters and elicit an emotional identifica-
tion with the protagonists and their fates. The addressee of this art of
illusion is an ideal ethical subject that is sure of his/her emotions and
capable of virtue, a subject that recognises and follows the voice of
his/her ‘inner nature’ (cf. Sauder 1974: 92). This reflexive emotional
consciousness forms the basis for morally sound actions within
society.
19th-century realism distanced itself both from concepts of 18th-
century illusion and its moral and aesthetic implications as well as
from the concept of ‘appearance’ of the romantics. The reproductive
art of the French realists, for instance, lacks the educational and senti-
mental moral component. Balzac and especially Flaubert defined the
novel as a representation of extra-literary reality in the sense of an
adequate description of reality (Balzac speaks of reproduction
rigoreuse). To sum up, we can say that with the development of the
sciences and the invention of new media such as photography, the
conditions for the representation of reality in the 19th century slowly
changed. While still measuring itself against aesthetic illusion as an
effect suggesting authenticity, 19th-century representation of reality no
10
‘If imitation is supposed to be beautiful, it has to give us an aesthetic illusion; the
rational powers of the soul, however, must be convinced that it is imitation and not
nature itself.’ [My translation]
298 Susanne Knaller
longer carried emotional or moral connotations as had been the case

in the 18th century. It no longer had a transcending function, but de-
veloped as its main parameters perception and the observation of
reality as well as connectivity to given constructs of reality. With this
displacement within the aesthetic discourse formation, literature ap-
proximated a tradition of the fine arts where mimesis was defined in
the sense of rendition and where creating a reproduction of reality and
similarity were understood as artistic/artisan qualities. In literature,
the Aristotelian concept of mimesis, which considers mimesis and
illusion as a unity, dominated until the 19th century. Aristotelian mi-
mesis means depiction, creating techniques of fictionalisation which
do not reproduce what is in the foreground but rather the possible and
the probable. Poetry is thought to be descriptive and should orientate
itself to the appearance of reality, yet never merely copy or reproduce
it (see Ritzer 2004: 86, 89). The poetics of realism and naturalism
connected to the concept of imitatio rerum in painting and defined the
relations reality/art and reality/artist through forms of perception and
depiction which were, inter alia, derived from the new medium of
photography: objective observation and description of a given reality.
The realistic and naturalistic strategies are certainly also fictional
strategies. Irene Albers, with reference to Zola and in analogy with
Roland Barthes, speaks of an effet de photographie. She also shows
that Zola cannot solve the ambivalence between créateur (the author
as creator) and observateur (the author as observer):
Das ungelöste Problem seiner Theorie ist das Problem der positivistischen Wis-
senschaftstheorie. Es resultiert auch aus der undurchschauten Medialität der
Beobachtung und der Gestaltung des Experiments, der ungeklärten Rolle des
Subjekts in der Relationierung von ‘Sehen’ und ‘Wissen’. (Albers 2002a: 244,
249)11
Theories of photography have reflected this relationship of subject/
medium/picture from the very beginning and have raised questions of
perception. As Wolfgang Kemp notes, there has been a displacement
since the mid-19th century from imitation of nature to an imitation of
the visual: “Jetzt will man nicht mehr zu sehen geben, sondern das
11
‘The unresolved problem of his theory is the problem of the positivist theory of
science. It is also due to the yet undiscovered medial character of observation and to
the making of the experiment, the unsolved role of the subject in the process of
relating ‘seeing’ to ‘knowing’.’ [My translation]
Sehen geben.” (1999: 20)12 The photographer faces reality and its pic-
tures and potential pictures, respectively, as he faces his own per-
ception. In connection with the kind of ‘naturalistic’ photography
postulated by him, Emerson speaks of a form of image which reflects
“physical, physiological and psychological properties of sight” show-
ing us how things look, not how they are – “the naturalistic photo-
graphy […] would endeavour to render the tree as it appeared to him
when standing a hundred yards off” (Emerson 1889: 126).
Illustration 1: Peter Henry Emerson, “Waterlillies” (1886)
Besides Emerson, this development becomes evident in David

Brewster and Hermann von Helmholtz, who also describe the stereo-
scope and photography, respectively, as subjective constructions
which are based on physiological (sense) and rational-constructive
fundamentals (creating and understanding symbols through memory
and experience). This is where, at the beginning of the 20th century,
one of the basic features of a definition of art photography can be
found. Photography developed a medial self-consciousness which
arose from ‘experience’ (and ‘sensation’) as well as from ‘perception’
12
‘Now there is no longer the intention to give us things to see, but rather to give us
the (process of) seeing.’ [My translation]
300 Susanne Knaller
as introduced by empirical approaches of physiological, psychologi-

cal, and perceptual theory.
This construct dimension was consistently adopted by the 20th-
century avant-gardes. They understood photography to be an abstrac-
tion of visual and spatial experiences (Bauhaus, surrealism) and led it
into a displacement of object and mimesis. This development already
became apparent in the 19th century. Oliver Wendell Holmes, for in-
stance, recognised a consequential change of the term of reference:
Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact, matter as a visible object is of
no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a
few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and
that is all we want of it. (Holmes in Busch 2001: 505)
The new photographic devices and their images linked questions of
mimesis with the consciousness of materiality and perception of the
objects. The questions as to what is art in photography and which aes-
thetic shape photographic art is supposed to take were answered both
with reference to object authenticity as well as to artistic subjectivity.
Both established models – the realistic postulate of object authenticity
and the idealistic postulate of subjectivity – thereby underwent signif-
icant changes: mimesis, hetero-referentiality and referential authen-
ticity (the factual) were expanded through the indexicality of the
photographic image, while the creative, imaginative subject as the
perceiving allowed the photographic images to produce the view self-
reflexively. The photograph thus became an object-recording,
perception-reflexive medium. Photographic perception is therefore in
a precarious equilibrium between indexical recording (light trace) and
perception/observation.
Photographic images are hence accurate and momentary. In the
photographic image, reality uncovers aspects which would have
stayed hidden to the naked eye in everyday perception. As the early
theorists show, photography downrightly provoked the use of magni-
fying glasses and later detailed enlargement. After looking through a
magnifying glass, Samuel Morse observed: “The effect of the lens up-
on the picture was in a great degree like that of a telescope in nature.”
(in Gunthert 2003: 16f.) Morse’s comparison refers just as much to
the scientific-objective revelation character of the image as to the
presence of traces which the photographer was not entirely able to
control during the recording. A new form of seeing and reproducing
emerged, which experimental picture artists also wanted to express.

For film, Dziga Vertov writes:
I am a kino-eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only
I can see it […]. My path leads to a fresh perception of the world. I decipher in a
new way a world unknown to you. (1984: 17f.)
This is how Vertov describes his Kino-Glaz. Ossip Brik writes on the
occasion of an exhibition of photos by Alexander Rodtschenko:
Vertov is right. The camera can act in an autonomous fashion. It can see things
that man is not accustomed to seeing […]. The ordinary human field of vision
must be abandoned. (Brik 1987: 295)
What has been said so far makes it clear that, given the medial pecu-
liarities of photography, its artfulness can be determined only to a cer-
tain extent through established mimesis and concepts of appearance.
Due to its semiotic condition as a fundamental indexical sign, photo-
graphy can only maintain the relation of mimesis and appearance if it
denies its semiotic quality and is, for instance, geared towards
iconicity, the representativeness of painting (as in Pictorialism). If it
wants to instil its own discourse of art photography, it needs to re-
formulate mimesis and appearance, both through their characteristics
such as reference and object authenticity, which are defined by their
indexicality, as well as through a related, specific form of perception.
This is where the concept of description becomes relevant again. Its
determining functions of referentiality and visuality are emphasized
through the postulate of objectivity which was introduced into the
discourse of art by realism. Indexicality and objectivity can be com-
bined in the concept of description. For Lincoln Kirstein, for instance,
photography would best be made use of if it were to produce a “de-
scriptive document” (1932: 27). Yet, the concept of description goes
beyond this function. This is revealed by looking at the specific semi-
otic process of photography. Analogous photography is first of all
indexical. The photographic act is, moreover, not pure mimetic depic-
tion, but implies an archiving and recording function. However, pho-
tography is not only recording, but also image: “A photograph isn’t
what was photographed. It’s something else. It’s a new fact.” (Garry
Winogrand13) It appears that photography has to redefine the appear-
ance and the concept of illusion discussed above in the sense of fictio.
As an indexical medium, photography always factually refers to
13
In: Winogrand/Lifson/Fraenkel 1999: [n. p.], between plates 10 and 11
302 Susanne Knaller
absent objects or subjects. Yet these are put into a creative, construc-
tive context. This does not primarily mean an imaginative creation of
picture elements. Fictio in the sense of ‘construct’ becomes virulent
from the beginning in the photographic process, as a photograph is
created as an image of perception, and in that experiences of seeing
and reception are illustrated. Photography itself embodies a self-
referential moment – it is, as already elaborated on, a rendition of
vision. As the subject positions itself between perception and active
creation, the photographic image becomes mimesis (depiction) of
vision. For Talbot, for instance, the splendor of photographed objects
is overwhelming but not sufficient to understand the given vision: the
meticulous descriptions of photographs position the iconicity of
photography not only in the field of subjective choices (of picture
segments) but also in the field of a self-reference of perception. The
description takes the image out of its property as ‘phainomenon’,
splendor, apparentia, and allows for it to become a legible image/
medium.
This view was taken from one of the upper windows of the Hotel de Douvres,
situated at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. The spectator is looking to the north-
east. The time is the afternoon. The sun is just quitting the range of buildings
adorned with columns: its façade is already in the shade, but a single shutter
standing open projects far enough forward to catch a gleam of the sunshine. The
weather is hot and dusty, and they have just been watering the road, which has
produced two broad bands of shade upon it, which unite in the foreground,
because, the road being partially under repair (as is seen from the two wheel-
barrows, &c. &c.), the watering machines have been compelled to cross to the
other side. By the roadside, a row of cittadines and cabriolets are waiting, and a
single carriage stands in the distance a long way to the right. A whole forest of
chimneys borders the horizon: for, the instrument chronicles whatever it sees, and
certainly would delineate a chimney-pot or a chimney-sweeper with the same
impartiality as it would the Apollo of Belvedere. The view is taken from a
considerable height, as it appears easily by observing the house on the right hand;
the eye being necessarily on a level with that part of the building on which the
horizontal lines or courses of stone appear parallel to the margin of the picture.
(Talbot 1992: 85f.)
Talbot is thus the first to determine the photographic picture as a de-

scribing image and at the same time as an image to be described, a
hetero-referential as well as a self-referential image.
Illustration 2: Henry Fox Talbot, “View of the Boulevards at Paris” (1843)
What Talbot’s perception of describing images and images to be de-

scribed points towards is the fact that photography inevitably becomes
a text image: it is back-pedalling and isolation of a moment. It disinte-
grates connections into fractions, it is de-contextualisation and frag-
mentation of the situation (see Albers 2002b: 146f.): photography
“nötigt zur Entzifferung” (‘compels to decipher’) (Busch 1989: 343),
while the words recursively gain their authenticity from the unques-
tionable indexicality of the image:
Talbot hat damit auch eine erste, weitreichende Theorie des Fotografischen ent-
worfen, sie aus der Spannung zwischen Bildern und Texten entwickelt. Als Ge-
genstand des Wahrnehmungssinns bedarf die Evidenz des Bildes der Beschrei-
bung, um sich aus der Ferne, in der sie versunken ist, zu lösen. (Ibid.: 501)14
In Talbot’s view, nature does indeed depict itself: the apparatus re-
cords things mechanically and is not selective, yet the image has to
become conscious of itself as an image in order to fulfil its function.
14
‘Thus Talbot created a first, far-reaching theory of photography, which he devel-
oped from the tension between images and texts. […] As an object of perception the
evidence of the picture requires description in order to free itself from the distance
where it has been caught.’ [My translation]
304 Susanne Knaller
Meaning is established in the receptive act of describing the photo-

graphic description. With this mode of description, Talbot shows the
nature of the photographic image: mediality, self-reference and recep-
tive perception as the carriers of semiotic actions.
On the basis of what has been said so far, we can explain the con-
cept of description in the following terms: it mediates between in-
dexicality and iconicity (from the chemical copy to the picture). It
includes the complex interplay of perception, object, image formation
and reception, which is contained in the concepts of index and icon,
in the photographic process of production and reception. The concept
of description, which defines photography, strengthens the authentic-
ity of photography as it is determined by its iconicity, which is created
by perception, self-reference and reception. As shown by Talbot, the
tension between rendition and image has been inherent in photo-
graphy from the beginning. Since the 1980s, when photography was
finally established as a separate field in the art system, the mediation
position of description in the constellation index/icon can clearly be
recognised. This is because contemporary photography positions itself
between referentiality and self-reference, perception and iconicity.
Characteristic of it is, for instance, the exhibition project Un’altra
oggettività/Another Objectivity15, in which the editors initially argued
for objective, descriptive pictures. Artists such as Jeff Wall, Thomas
Struth and Candida Höfer “insist therefore on a descriptive and veri-
fiable reference to a motif (or subject) whose nature is heterogeneous
to the image – that is to say, precisely, objective” (Chevrier/Lingwood
1989: 34). Yet one thing is imperative: the image is not only the trace
of an experience or situation, but self-reflexively creates a new objec-
tive reality as a picture, ‘the reality of the image as picture’. This self-
referential iconicity can be upgraded through explicitly relating rendi-
tion and creation. This becomes particularly clear with the digitalisa-
tion of photography and digital photography, respectively. Thomas
Ruff, who edits his architectural pictures digitally, explains that he
does not want to document a building. The authenticity of the photo-
graph is of no concern to him. What is much more decisive is the
“Bildermachen” (‘making of images’) (Ruff in Cosar 1994). As will
15
June 10 – July 17, 1988, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. March 14 –
April 30, 1989, Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. June 24 – August 31,
1989, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato.
be illustrated below with works by Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky,

Thomas Ruff and others, trends in new photography since the 1980s
have formulated an aesthetics positioned between reference-authen-
ticity and iconicity:
Gursky’s contemporary Urbild of the Rhine […] frankly presents its unbroken ho-
rizon as a creation of the digital studio. But an equally pristine green band already
zips across the center of Sha Tin of 1994. Having wised up to Gursky’s digital
mischief, we are condemned to wonder whether he hasn’t swept the track clean, or
inserted the post-modern touch of the giant video screen on which the race thun-
ders to finish. But, to use photography’s old-fashioned lingo, the picture is per-
fectly straight. (Galassi 2001: 41)
In Gursky’s photography, description – the ‘straightness’ – is relevant
as a micro-genre. This single image-creating, describing mode has
prevailed in the history of photography to varying degrees. American
New Vision and Straight Photography fall back on description while
Pictorialism also forces narrative moments. Experimental European
photography emphasises the aspect of perception, while documentary
photography has postulated description since the 1930s. Within the
arts, photography is perceived and used as an indexical, descriptive,
documentary medium (e. g. in Pop Art, Concept Art, or Land Art). In
post-modern art, the photographic medium is put under extreme fic-
tionalisation and de-authentication. With the mise en scène of stereo-
typical images and the reproduction of newspaper and advertisement
photographs, the iconic and mass media character are processed
aesthetically (already with Andy Warhol and later Cindy Sherman or
Richard Prince). Descriptive images remain decisive in contemporary
photography in many forms: description co-exists with narrative
modes, as, for instance, in Jeff Wall’s Street Photography or in Nan
Goldin’s autobiographical pictures. It commits itself to demands for
objectivity and registration, as, for instance, in Thomas Struth’s and
Thomas Ruff’s architectural photography of the 1980s. These artists
seem to connect to earlier photography with interior and exterior pho-
tos. Both moments – the fictionalising narrative and the descriptive –
are not always reconcilable. Yet for advocates of objectivity, the re-
flexive fictio-form of photography is also decisive:
They [the photographers] know that no observation, no description, however
precise or scientific it may be, can establish a ‘pure fact’. They know that all re-
presentation, even photographic, is fiction and artifice […]. (Chevrier/Lingwood
1989: 33)
306 Susanne Knaller
4.
Man hat danach sehr Unrecht, wenn man glaubt, der Daguerreotyp werde der
Kunst der Malerei großen Schaden zufügen. Er schreibt die leblose Natur ab; die
Beobachtung der lebenden und der Geist sie zu fassen ist ihm fremd; noch weni-
ger weiß er von Erfindung und freier Darstellung dessen, was unsere Phantasie
und unser Gemüt bewegt. (Schorn/Koloff in Kemp 1999: 59)16
If, as in the assessment by Ludwig Schorn and Eduard Koloff (1839),
photography only copies inanimate nature and has no space for the
observation of the animate, then architectural photography is the
photographic genre par excellence. This also appears to apply to early
photography: the first heliography handed down is a rooftop land-
scape by Nicéphore Niépce, the first daguerreotype shows a street in
Paris, William Henry Fox Talbot took a photograph of a boulevard in
the same city, and at the beginning of the 20th century Eugène Atget’s
pictures of Paris had a sustainable effect. Documentary and descrip-
tive functions have defined the architectural photography until today,
as architect and photographer Klaus Kinold noted in 1993:
Architekturfotografie heißt, ein Gebäude visuell zu beschreiben, in der Regel für
den Leser einer Publikation. Umfassend funktioniert das nur in der Serie: innen –
außen, von verschiedenen Seiten, als Totale und im Detail; die Fotos in Korres-
pondenz mit Zeichnungen und Texten.17 (Kinold in Weisner 1993: 13)
Kinold continues that ‘the autonomy of the image in relation to the
18
object’ is not given.
Talbot has already shown that a text describing and explaining a
pictures goes beyond its strictly picture-accompanying function by
expounding the problems of perception and rendition. He also showed
that the image is not merely a rendition, but must be understood as an
implicit picture of perception. As demonstrated in the foregoing dis-
16
‘One is definitely mistaken in thinking that the daguerreotype is going to inflict
great damage on the art of painting. It copies inanimate nature; there is no observation
of the animate nature and it lacks the spirit to grasp it; it knows even less about the in-
vention and free representation of what moves our imagination and our mind.’ [My
translation]
17
‘Architectural photography means visually describing a building, usually for the
reader of a publication. Comprehensively, this only works in a series: interior – exte-
rior, from different angles, as a whole or in detail; the pictures in correspondence with
drawings and texts.’ (Kinold in Weisner 1993: 13; my translation)
18
“Autonomie des Bildes gegenüber dem Gegenstand” (ibid.; my translation).
cussion, object and reference authenticity attributed to the photo-

graphic image has been tied to medial self-reflection from the be-
ginning – rendition and imagination are placed in a more or less open
relationship. Although this means that reference authenticity (‘fact’)
is superimposed by fictio, the subjective component favors the con-
cept of authenticity of the representational picture (as in Emerson’s
concept of ‘naturalistic photography’). Yet the indexical character
remains the determining basis and is itself self-referentially taken into
the picture. This becomes obvious even in such radical fictio-photo-
graphs as those by Thomas Demand. Demand cuts out pictures from
magazines etc., recompiling them into three-dimensional paper mod-
els. He then photographs the models with a Swiss Sinar, a camera
with a telescopic lens. The pictures are later exhibited behind Perspex
and without frames. In the catalogue to Demand’s 2005 exhibition at
the MoMA in New York, Roxana Marcoci writes: “The resulting
pictures are convincingly real and strangely artificial.” (2005: 10)
With this play between indexicality/referentiality and construction/
fictio, Thomas Demand radicalises the simultaneously hetero- and
self-referential structure of photography without erasing the traces of
both the hetero- and self-referential processes. In the well-known
picture Flur (1995), which shows the corridor leading to serial killer
Jeffrey Dahmer’s flat, there are – as in all of Demand’s pictures – no
people to be seen, and even the objects are alienated: the doors have
no latches, the picture seems proportionally inaccurate, digitalised
and fictio. At the same time, it is a place of real-life events and a
criminological recording of traces. Moreover, it is the analogous
picture of an analogous model of an occurring picture which again
showed an occurrence, Jeffrey Dahmer’s hall. In none of the post-
modern photographs of the 1980s, such as those in Cindy Sherman’s
theatrical performances or Richard Prince’s photographs of commer-
cial photographs, this concurrence of image and perception in relation
to the occurring as object and discourse is shown in such a cones-
quent manner. Thus, for Michael Fried, Demand’s work differs from
Gursky’s and “stands apart from it in its insistence on the importance
of the referent – in his art, as in all traditional photography, the
referent ‘adheres’, to use Barthes’ term” (Fried 2005: 203). Even
though Gursky digitally edits his photos and hence follows an order
different from Demand’s, ‘straightness’ of photography is his basis,
too. Indexicality and hetero-referentiality, and thus the descriptive
308 Susanne Knaller
attitude, determine the photographic picture as an artistic image. This

has applied also in theory as of the 1980s at the latest, after Barthes’
insistence on photography’s indexicality. Rosalind Krauss explains
that
every photography is the result of physical imprint transferred by light reflections
onto a sensitive surface. […] The photograph is thus a type of icon, or visual
likeness, which bears an indexical relationship to its object. (1985: 203)
For Bernd Busch, photography is the ‘technological linking of the
optic principle of the perspective mode of perception to the chemical
19
recording of the sensitive photographic layer’ [my translation] . And
for Philippe Dubois there is no photography without a reference.
After a first phase in which photography was defined as mimesis, as a
mirror of the real, and after a second phase of codes and deconstruc-
tion in which mimetic relations of reality and image were merely un-
derstood as effects and construction, Dubois recognises a third phase
in which the discourse of the index and of reference dominates. After
its important post-structuralist cycle, theory returns to the question of
‘referential realism’. The meaning of the photographs does therefore
not lie in themselves. The indexical sign is a contingent trace which
must be read and interpreted. Authentic images are, as Wortmann
argues, not finds torn from the world, but ‘pictures of reality’ in
which one finds mirrored experiences and discourses as an (objective)
image of the world (see Wortmann 2006: 167). As being indexical,
images are at first intentionless, contingent, presymbolic signs. Only
in the process of contemplation do they become significant (see ibid.:
180). This, however, also applies to verbal texts as well as to icono-
graphic paintings. In contrast to the latter, however, analogous photo-
graphy is dependent on its indexicality: every semiotisation is based
on this trace of reality. By copying pictures into three-dimensional
objects, which in turn become photographs, Demand simultaneously
transfers semiotic processes and meaning-constituting discourses into
the picture. This explicit ‘discursivation’ of the image can also be in-
terpreted as an expansion to established architectural photography,
insofar as contemporary architectural photography is an objectively
recording, perception-reflecting medium which also reproduces dis-
19
“[...] technologische Verknüpfung des optischen Prinzips der perspektivischen
Wahrnehmungsweise mit dem chemischen Aufzeichnungsverfahren der empfind-
lichen fotografischen Schicht” (Busch 1989: 11).
cursive image contexts. The architectural pictures by Gursky and Ruff

are, like Demand’s photographs, images of culture and pictures of
perception and discourses. What is at stake here is not levelling the
difference between the object and its rendition nor imagining a reality
of simulacra, because representation and perception simultaneously
remain constitutive of the object picture: Andreas Gursky wants to set
the visual level of reality in parallel with the textual level of reality:
Entscheidend ist der unmittelbare visuelle Zugriff auf Wirklichkeit, der Grund-
stein für das nächste Bild ist. Das ist das eine. Das andere sind die visuellen
Erfahrungen, die ich bereits gemacht habe, die zu bestimmten Bildideen geführt
haben und dann über Monate, zum Teil auch über Jahre erarbeitet werden. […]
Ich wollte immer eine ganz klare, nachvollziehbare Rückkoppelung zur vorhande-
nen Wirklichkeit aufrechterhalten. Es geht mir letztendlich ja nur um Verarbei-
tung von Wirklichkeit, nicht um Wirklichkeiten, die mit dem, was wir tagtäglich
erleben, nicht mehr zu tun haben. (Gursky in Krajewski 1999: 12, 14)20
There is hardly any space for reference authenticity:
[...] in der Tat werden meine Bilder zunehmend formaler und abstrakter. Eine
bildnerische Struktur scheint die abgebildeten, realen Begebenheiten zu über-
lagern. Ich unterwerfe die reale Situation meinem künstlerischen Konzept der
Bildfindung. (Gursky in Görner 1998: v)21
And for Thomas Ruff, the “Authentizität der Photographie” (‘authen-
ticity of photography’) is irrelevant; it is much more about “Bilder-
machen” (‘the making of images’) (Ruff in Cosar 1994):
Photographs aren’t depictions, they’re just images. […] For that reason my
images are not depictions of reality, but show a kind of second reality, the image
of an image. (Wulffen 1993: 66)
The obvious question as to what differentiates the new photographers
from artists such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, whose ap-
proach can be described as pictures of pictures, can be answered by
pointing to the fact that Gursky and others take art photographs and
20
‘Most decisive is the immediate visual access to reality which is the basis for the
next picture. This is one aspect. The other are the visual experiences I have already
made, which have led to certain ideas for pictures and which are then elaborated over
months or sometimes even years. […] I have always wanted to maintain a clear, com-
prehensible linkage to the given reality. Because, after all, I am only interested in the
processing of reality and not in realities which have nothing to do with what we expe-
rience every day.’ [My translation]
21
‘In fact, my pictures are increasingly becoming more formal and abstract. A visual
structure seems to eclipse the depicted, real events. I subject the real situation to my
artistic concept of image-finding.’ [My translation]
310 Susanne Knaller
do not create art through the medium of photography. This is required

by the form of the, as Galassi calls it, “inventive description” (2001:
40) which is innate to photography: fiction as well as descriptive
documentation are formative. As becomes clear with reference to the
initial quote by Ludwig Schorn and Eduard Koloff, photography has
– not least due to the technical options of the period – from its
beginnings been understood as an adequate medium to depict nature
and objects. As a motif of the immobile, architectural photography
congenially represents the objective self-projection of nature called
for by the early photographers. Images of architecture were, and still
are, understood and used as archivable documents. This is a tradi-
tional line, which the new photographers also refer to when they
formally and textually re-formulate this objective-descriptive attitude.
At the same time, there is, in this reference to medial and cultural dis-
courses, a self-referential element, so that architectural motifs allow
for a transformation from object to image (see Derenthal 2000: 19). If,
for instance, Thomas Ruff quotes postcards from the 1950s with his
pictures of houses, in which the contemporary, modern, new buildings
are presented like sights, then he not only describes architecture, but
also its medial conditions and cultural forms of perception: he creates,
to quote Ruff, “images of images of reality” (Ruff in Adam 1990: 46).
Formally, the pictures remain in the descriptive mode, as shown by a
definition of the architectural images of Gursky, Struth and Ruff by
Anne Wauters:
They are statements of fact, cold and even detached descriptions, objective obser-
vations characterized by their frontality and precision. Static, empty of all human
or even animal presence, for these buildings time is suspended. (1996: 40)
What is decisive is that the descriptive and documentary approach is
linked to the decision to present the pictures in the context of art. The
new photographers find examples of this in conceptual art and in the
works of their mentors Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose serial rendi-
tions of industrial motifs have had a late but, since the 1950s, sus-
tainable effect. The de-contextualised, alienated and at the same time
aesthetisising form of the images dissolves the descriptive, frontally
and uninvolvedly renditioning gesture towards sculptural representa-
tion. In pictures by the Düsseldorf photographers we also still find
this serial character evident: repeated motifs, repeated exposure tech-
nique.
Illustration 3: Thomas Struth, “Crosby Street, NY Soho” (1978)
Illustration 4: Thomas Ruff, “Haus 81” (1988)
In 1978, Thomas Struth took photographs of deserted streets in New

York, each from a central perspective position and frontally (see Illus-
312 Susanne Knaller
tration 4). He repeats these photos of streets in Düsseldorf and other

cities and complements them with skewed view points. Andreas
Gursky takes pictures of the entrance areas of large office buildings
with two re-appearing security guards behind a reception counter.
Thomas Ruff photographs façades of industrial or office buildings
and apartment houses in the peripheral areas either frontally or from a
skewed viewpoint. The exterior exposures in particular already form a
series of their own, exceeding the individual photographs. This not
only applies when it comes to the choice of motif, but also in terms of
the construction of the image: the façades of the buildings become de-
tached from their architectural functionality and ornamentality and
dissolve into a plane image which prescinds from colour and geome-
try as well as from sculpturality. The result is a reciprocal relationship
between conceptuality and indexicality. The characters of rendition
and indexicality are constituted by the motifs of functional to banal,
everyday architecture articulating reference authenticity, and above
all the observational perspective, which quotes classical architectural
exposures and pictures as well as the “Optik des Nabels” (‘optics of
the navel’) (Loock/Struth 1990: 24), which was despised by the
experimental avant-garde photographers. Conceptuality in the archi-
tectural pictures results from the discursivation of the mundane,
‘artless’ motifs and their radical, de-contextualised descriptive form
through re-contextualisation into the picture. In contrast to the
photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, these pictures present, above
all, a reflexive understanding of pictures and media and make an issue
out of the construction of the image at a meta-level (see preface in
Steinhauser/Derenthal 2000: 5).
This is most evident in Gursky’s pictures which enhance the
degree of abstraction by open, digital editing and their large format.
The exposure of the housing estate in Montparnasse, Paris, makes the
building jut out beyond the image border; the pictures of atria in large
hotels (for instance, in Atlanta) are reduced to studies of proportions
between man and architecture, and allow the observer to lose himself
in the picture. What Galassi calls “inventive description” can be re-
formulated as a reciprocal relationship between the image and the
rendered, through which the postulate of authenticity of photography
has been renewed since the 1980s. After the post-modern photography
of appropriated images, theories of de-differentiation between image
and reality in the notion of simulacrum – Baudrillard’s ‘death of
reality’ –, the basis of photographic aesthetics continues to be refer-

ence authenticity by referring to a trace of reality. This is exactly
where we find a connection to Conceptual Art. As already in Con-
ceptual Art and Land Art, matter and object worlds remain in the
game, recorded and commented on by photography. Examples of this
discursive implementation are the following: simultaneity of object
and semiotic process (Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs), concrete and
mediatised spaces (Smithson), relation between city and ideology
(Rosler), body and image, body and language (Baldessari), etc. The
reversibility between image and rendition, which is displayed in
Gursky’s pictures as well as in numerous museum images (by Struth
and Candida Höfer, for instance), shows that the self-referentiality
constituted by the synchrony of image and rendition does not resolve
the track of reality. As in Conceptual Art, the descriptive mode re-
mains a link between indexicality and abstraction. As opposed to
post-modern photography, there is no poetics of de-differentiation
between image and fiction/construct.
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Description in Music
Musical Sunrises
A Case Study of the Descriptive Potential of Instrumental Music
Michael Walter
The article explores the description of sunrises as a case-study of musical descrip-

tion. The understanding of musical descriptions in general, and consequently also
of sunrises, depends on appropriate cognitive framings (or markings) of the mu-
sic. Among these, a verbal framing (notably in the title of a composition) is help-
ful (but sometimes also misleading) in triggering a visual reference. The use of a
musical topos would be a further relevant framing. Besides such framings, the
essay explores several compositional means of musical description, in particular
several possibilities of using musical structure that provide a correlative to the
object described. These categories are illustrated by examples from Haydn’s
symphony Le Matin and Strauss’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In discussing the proc-
esses at work in the understanding of descriptive music, special emphasis is laid
on the cultural conditions of the epoch in focus. For, once these cultural condi-
tions disappear, it becomes difficult to understand the meaning, for example of
one of Haydn’s musical sunrises.
On a website of the German Fachausschuß Geschichte der Meteoro-
logie (Committee for the History of Meteorology) of the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Meteorologie (German Society for Meteorology) one
finds a ‘selection of works of classical music with a link to meteorolo-
gical subjects’1, that is, of compositions describing meteorological
events. Among these there are those compositions that one would tra-
ditionally expect to be mentioned in this context: the tempests in
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie (An
Alpine Symphony), in Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens, and, of course, in
Vivaldi’s concerto La tempesta di mare (op. 8,5/RV 253). There are
other pieces of which the relation to a meteorological subject is at
least doubtful, such as Beethoven’s piano sonatas no. 17 (“Tempest”)
and no. 14 (“Moonlight Sonata”). In both cases the subtitles are later
additions by other people than the composer himself. The epithet
“Mondscheinsonate”, for instance, goes back to the pianist Wilhelm
von Lenz, who, in 1852, claimed that the poet and music critic Lud-
1
“Eine Auswahl von Werken der klassischen Musik mit Bezug zu meteorolo-
gischen Themen” (Meteorology Online).
320 Michael Walter
wig Rellstab had compared the Adagio to a nightly boat trip at moon-
light on Lake Lucerne. (There is no evidence of this comparison in
Rellstab’s works, although in 1824 he published a story, “Theodor.
Eine musikalische Skizze”, in the Berliner allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung, where he likened the expression of the movement to a lake in
falling moonlight.) It was not before the 1920s that Arnold Schering
interpreted Beethoven’s instrumental music as containing hidden
programs and claimed that the program for the sonata no. 17 had been
Shakespeare’s The Tempest (cf. Schering 1934, Schering 1936). More
convincing of the examples of the Fachausschuß might be Beetho-
ven’s or Mendelssohn’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea
and Prosperous Voyage). But there are also obvious mistakes in this
list: Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring has nothing to do
with spring, nor with the Appalachians (cf. Pollack 1999: 390).
It is not difficult to find the reasons for such shortcomings. With-
out a thorough knowledge of music history or the pieces themselves
the authors of the list drew conclusions from the titles – or alleged
titles – of musical pieces as to their extramusical or programmatic
meaning. They could not know that, for example, the title Appala-
chian Spring was chosen by mere coincidence and did not refer to the
content of the music at all. Copland had the problem that neither he
himself nor to the author of the ballet, Martha Graham, had come up
with a title for his already music composed. The solution was found
when Graham, in reference to her favourite poem, chose the mis-
leading title Appalachian Spring. Copland agreed but was subse-
quently much amused by various interpretations based on this title.
Even today the music is still heard, in Neil Butterworth’s words, “as
having its roots in the countryside of New England” and as a “strong
expression of national feeling” (Butterworth 1985: 101). The reason
for such an interpretation is that Appalachian Spring is one of Cop-
land’s works which are considered to be typically American. There-
fore it was convincing to relate the work, via its title, to an American
landscape (cf. Walter 2004: 294).
For a musicologist the list of the Fachausschuß might provoke
some humorous or dismissive comments, but more important is the
epistemological question of how such errors can occur. Since music
itself cannot express a meaning in the strict sense of the word, we
need a cognitive framing to attribute to music such a meaning. Nor-
mally we rely on the fact that the title of a piece of music provides a
Musical Sunrises 321
reliable hint to its semantic or descriptive meaning. Thus, the title is

an important part of the cognitive framing, although, as we have seen,
it can be quite misleading.
Musical descriptions of sunrises are not rare in music history.
Some well known examples are the beginning of Joseph Haydn’s
Symphony No. 6 (Le Matin, 1761), the Trio with Chorus “Sie steigt
herauf, die Sonne” (“The sun ascends, he mounts”) from Haydn’s
oratorio The Seasons (c. 1800, No. 11), the sunrise in the prologue of
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Attila (1846, “Coro di eremiti” in the scena
of Foresto’s cavatina: “L’alito del mattin già l’aure appura”), the
beginning of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, 1896), or the transition from night to sunrise in Strauss’
Alpensinfonie (1915).
Presumably, Strauss’ first measure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is
the best known example of a musical sunrise because of its use by
Stanley Kubrick for a musical illustration of the sunrise in 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968). But this has been, so to speak, a secondary
exploitation of a musical gesture already well known as a description
of a sunrise. But how can we know that a specific piece of music
describes a sunrise? Since music bears no semantic meaning, there are
no hints of the representation of an extramusical event in the music
itself. This is even true for the Zarathustra example, although by tra-
dition we are used to interpreting it as a sunrise. Yet tradition might
be as misleading as a title, as the case of the two sonatas by Beetho-
ven has shown.
To interpret music as a description of a sunrise we need semantic
hints which are reliable and clearly connected to the composition by
the composer himself, since a musical description must be intentional
in order to be reliably identified as such (a requirement which seems
less important with regard to literature or painting). In the examples
given above such hints do exist. Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 bears the
title Le Matin (The Morning). There are no more indications than this
title (presumably chosen by Haydn himself). Since it seems to an-
nounce programmatic music, it was easy for interpreters to conclude
that a morning begins with a sunrise, or in other words, that the slow
introduction of the first movement of this symphony depicts such a
sunrise.
In the Trio from Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons it is not the title,
but the text which provides a cognitive framing: “Sie steigt herauf, die
322 Michael Walter
Sonne, sie steigt. / Sie naht, sie kommt. / Sie strahlt, sie scheint. / Sie
scheint in herrlicher Pracht, / in flammender Majestät! / Heil! O
Sonne, Heil!” (‘He ascends, the sun, he mounts. He’s near, he comes.
He beams, he shines. He flames in radiance full, in glowing majesty!
Hail, O sun, be hail’d!’).
In Verdi’s Attila the descriptive meaning of the music becomes not
only clear by the words of the chorus but also by the stage direction:
Le tenebre vanno diradandosi fra le nubi tempestose: quindi a poco a poco una
rosea luce, sino a che (sul finir della scena) il subito raggio del sole inondando per
tutto, riabbella il firmamento del più sereno e limpido azzurro. Il tocco lento della
campana saluta il mattino.
(The darkness is vanishing among the tempestuous clouds: then little by little a
rosy light spreads until (at the end of the scene) sudden sunrays flood all [the
stage], showing again the beauty of the cloudless and bright blue sky. The slow
stroke of the bell welcomes the morning. [My translation])
The beginning of Strauss’ Zarathustra, however, lacks the cognitive
framing in the form of a title. But, on the first page of the score, the
composer prefixed a text which partly reads: “When Zarathustra was
thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went
into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and
for ten years did not weary of it. But finally he had a change of heart –
and rising one morning with the dawn, he went before the sun, and
spoke thus to it: […]”.2 These are the opening words of Zarathustra’s
prologue. Since the status of this text in the score is not really clear –
is it a paratext in the Genettean sense or is it part of the score proper?
– one of the earliest interpretations of this beginning of Zarathustra
was ambiguous: ‘Within only a few measures, the beginning of the
tone poem describes a picture of enormous sublimity and greatness.
We witness a great natural spectacle, for example a sunrise.’3 If we
merely rely on the text in the score, the descriptive meaning of the
beginning of Zarathustra is by no means clear. But its musical
2
Nietzsche, online. (“Als Zarathustra dreissig Jahre alt war, verliess er seine Hei-
mat und den See seiner Heimat und ging in das Gebirge. Hier genoss er seines Geistes
und seiner Einsamkeit und wurde dessen zehn Jahre nicht müde. Endlich aber ver-
wandelte sich sein Herz – und eines Morgens stand er mit der Morgenröthe auf, trat
vor die Sonne hin und sprach zu ihr [...].” From Nietzsche 1968: 5.)
3
“Der Beginn der Tondichtung zeichnet uns in wenig Takten ein Bild von ge-
waltiger Erhabenheit und Größe. Wir wohnen einem großen Naturschauspiel bei, etwa
einem Sonnenaufgang. ” (Hahn c. 1912: 112, my translation)
structure, as will be shown below, can clarify its extramusical con-

tents. In contrast to this, the meaning of the sunrise in Strauss’ Alpine
Symphony seems to be much clearer because the section of the score
bears the title “Sonnenaufgang” (‘sunrise’).
Texts and titles thus give important hints for the triggering of an
audience’s receptive expectations. They form the horizon of expecta-
tions and in a way shape the listener’s capability for interpretation.
However, a title is not enough to design a cognitive framing for an
understanding of the contents of a piece of music. As the example of
Appalachian Spring has demonstrated, some composers chose the
titles of their scores at random. But Butterworth’s above quoted
misleading interpretation of this ballet hints at a second cognitive
framing necessary for making the listeners aware of the descriptive
content of a musical composition. This is the music itself, notably its
structure. Both criteria – extramusical semantic framings and
intramusical structure – must coexist; one alone would not be
sufficiently clear. (Butterworth’s interpretative mistake results from
his relying only on the title.) Haydn’s slow introduction to Le Matin,
although an admittedly short depiction of a sunrise, is typical of the
musical structure of sunrises (see Figure 1). First of all, it is not the
melody itself which is important in this example. Clearly, there is
hardly such a thing as ‘melody’, which is the rule with slow sym-
phonic introductions. Nevertheless, we have a kind of ‘melodic
contour’ as a result of the successive employment of various instru-
ments. Since Haydn’s score is far simpler than the scores by Strauss
to be discussed later, even a non-musician can ‘see’ that there is an
ascending melodic contour from the low violins to the oboes and
finally the high flutes. In the diagram in Figure 1 this is indicated by
the arrow above the score. (I am well aware that there is also the
bassline by bassoons and horns beneath the oboes, but they can be
neglected as the bassoons only double the basses, and the horn tones
are nothing more than a bass pedal.)
Given the fact that a rising sun ascends from the horizon, the
‘geometrical’ progression of the melodic contour from ‘low’ to ‘high’
ones seems to be a convenient means of mirroring the ascending
motion of the sun. However, the basis of this assumption is the con-
ventional division of notes into ‘high’ and ‘low’ ones, which emerged
in the Middle Ages (cf. Walter 1994). We are used to such geometri-
cal metaphors employed in discourse on music but should be aware of
324 Michael Walter
the fact that they are metaphors. This is important because any inter-
pretation of a musical structure depends on our prior understanding of
such metaphors, or in other words, the understanding of music, espe-
cially when music has a programmatic or descriptive meaning, de-
pends on the cultural context.
Figure 1: Joseph Haydn. Symphony Le Matin, introduction.
The second important descriptive device used in Haydn’s music is the

intensification of the orchestration: Haydn starts with the first violin,
adds the second, then the bassoons, horns, and basses, and finally
completes the range of the whole orchestra with the oboes and the
flute. I deliberately use the term ‘intensification’ instead of ‘enlarge-
ment’ of the orchestration because the addition of instruments leads to

a more intense and denser sound. This may be compared to the inten-
sification of brightness when the sun rises. Here, the correlation
between music and descriptive referent is arguably less metaphoric as
it rests on parallel intensifications in different perceptual areas (the
aural and the visual).
The third descriptive technique employed by Haydn is similar in
its resting on a perceptual structural analogy: it is the dynamic devel-
opment, the crescendo from the pianissimo at the beginning to the
fortissimo at the end of the slow introduction. It can also be related to
the growing brightness of the sun (as musical equivalent to a visual
event).
The fourth structural technique is the harmonic device of the
section which is very simple: Haydn begins in D major and reaches
the dominant A major at the climax of the introduction. Normally –
that is, compared to other musical sunrises – one would expect the
tonic at this point, but that was impossible in a slow introduction,
which had to end on the dominant. Although the overall harmonic
development in this introduction is very simple, there is nevertheless a
tension built into the details of the transition from the first harmony to
the last one, in which this tension is resolved: due to the requirements
of a slow introduction, Haydn, as already said, had not much of a
choice in his harmonic development but was able to create a harmonic
tension by suspensions and a secondary dominant before the A major
chord. Thus, the A major chord is heard as a breakthrough. A break-
through may here be defined as a more or less sudden resolution of
tension without a loss of intensity (resulting even in an increased
intensity).
Of course, ‘breakthrough’ is – again – only a metaphor, which
facilitates our understanding of music because, technically, this
section is no more than the harmonic trajectory from tonic to
dominant. But in using – and arguably triggering – the notion of
‘breakthrough’ the music can easily be related to a sunrise. At the
beginning of the sunrise one sees only a small part of the sun, then a
larger one and so on, until one can see the full disc of the sun as a
visual ‘breakthrough’. (In the stage direction to Attila this break-
through is verbalized as a development from the cloudy and tempes-
tuous sky to a sun-flooded scene with a cloudless blue sky.)
326 Michael Walter
At this point it is possible to give an overview of some elements

(cognitive framings and descriptive devices) that facilitate the under-
standing of musical descriptions:
1. There is a semantic explanation of the meaning of the music given
in a title or a text, i. e., a verbal reference. It is important that this
verbal reference is not ambiguous (at least not for expert listeners),
since music itself is already ambiguous. Suffice it to mention two
examples: one of the sections of Strauss’ Zarathustra is entitled
“Of Science” (“Von der Wissenschaft”). It begins with a fugue. A
fugue is a musical technique and belonged to what had been
called, ever since the baroque era, ‘musical science’. Thus there is
a clear correlation between the title of the section and its musical
contents. In contrast to this, one may point out another section of
Zarathustra which is entitled “Of Those at the Back of the World”
(“Von den Hinterweltlern”). Who are these people from “the Back
of the World”, and what is the meaning of the term? One has to
read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in order to find an interpretation of
this heading, and even then one does not know Strauss’ interpreta-
tion of Nietzsche’s book. The meaning of the music must here re-
main unclear because the verbal description is ambiguous.
2. There is a pictorial relation between music and the event depicted
which is based on common (in part arbitrary, but culturally con-
ventionalized) assumptions about the pictorial attributes bestowed
on music. These are pictorial or visual references, as becomes
clear from the following example: the last piece of Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition entitled “The Gate of the Old Fortress of
Kiev”4. The movement begins with massive ‘chord piles’ consist-
ing of eight notes piled up (or ‘towered’ up) on top of one another.
This causes remarkable difficulties for the pianist, but the pictorial
reference ‘tower’ becomes very clear to the expert listener who is
able to associate the sound of these chords with their visual repre-
sentation in the score and thus also to correlate the music itself to
the picture of the towers of the gate.
4
In English this piece is usually referred to as the “Great Gate of Kiev”, which is
not a literal translation.
Figure 2: Modest Mussorgsky, “The Gate of the Old Fortress of Kiev”
3. There is a metaphorical explanation of music which is not so much

a convention as a result of the spontaneous correlation of ab-
stract structures of everyday life to the impression of music. In
these cases it is important that the correlation be of an abstract and
not of a concrete nature. The latter would force the composer into
mere acoustic mimicry or perceptual iconicity (as was often the
case in the 18th century) and would limit the composer’s artistic
means of expression. We, for example, often speak of a ‘break-
through’ when to a dispute a solution has been found to which all
participants can agree. At first, one has the complicated situation
of the dispute and then the uncomplicated and relaxed situation
after the breakthrough. This is basically a sequential structure.
However, because we know this structure (which becomes mani-
fest in gestures, for example), we are able to recognize the general
contours of the situation if musically ‘depicted’ by means of dia-
grammatic iconicity, even without knowing its contents (i. e., the
arguments). In music, the structural situation of the dispute is
represented by a harmonically (or otherwise) complicated state
which dissolves into an uncomplicated state. The breakthrough is
328 Michael Walter
usually marked as a musical climax, which accompanies a calming

down of all musical parameters: harmony, orchestration, melody or
melodic contour and rhythm. In the case of Haydn’s introduction,
the dotted rhythms of the beginning are thus reduced to square
repetitive semiquavers framed by pedals in the flute and horns.
Even the dotted rhythms in the last measure of the introduction in
the two violins follow the usual ritardando device evoked by the
repetitions. The interpretation of the meaning of a musical break-
through (or any other structure), however, depends on the verbal
(or visual) references in conjunction with the musical structure: a
musical tempest, although usually comprising a breakthrough like
a musical sunrise, consists of a relatively calm musical section at
the beginning, which harmonically and rhythmically becomes
more and more complicated. As in a musical sunrise the orchestra-
tion is intensified and there is a crescendo until the final break-
through. However, this breakthrough is not a calming down but
rather the opposite. It represents the most dramatic situation (and
is therefore the most complex musical section without any relaxa-
tion). The pictorial reference in this case is the darkening sky; the
verbal reference is the indication ‘tempest’ (as in tempesta di
mare).
4. The last element facilitating a musical description again belongs to
the category of cognitive framings: it is the use of topoi, i. e., a
cognitive framing provided by the musical tradition. In the case of
the sunrise, the topos was available for Strauss and exploited in
Zarathustra. Once the topos ‘sunrise’ was established, it could be
referred to using merely musical means5. This is also true of musi-
cal tempests. In both cases, composers could rely on the virtual
verbal description which was part of the topos instead of providing
a descriptive title of their own.
5
There are other topoi as well which have become equally easily understandable.
For instance, battle music is such a topos, or the description of a tempest. In both of
these cases also pictorial or ‘diagrammatic’ features play an important role, namely
the (varying) distances of two armies (cf. Beethoven’s Battle Symphony) or the ap-
proach of a tempest which becomes louder and louder the nearer it comes. The dis-
tance in the objects musically referred to correlates in these cases with appropriate
acoustic phenomena.
Relying on the topos, Strauss could dispense with a specific descrip-

tive title for the beginning of his Zarathustra. Hahn’s above quoted
conclusion that this beginning represents a sunrise was thus by no
means arbitrary but a logical conclusion derived from the topos. His
hesitation (‘for example a sunrise’) results only from the fact that the
dimensions of Strauss’ sunrise exceed the topos in a previously un-
experienced way.
Although there seems to be a tremendous difference between
Haydn’s modest introduction and Strauss’ bombastic beginning of
Zarathustra, there is a remarkable similarity in the musical means
employed, which is shown in the following diagram, Figure 3 (com-
prising measures 1-21 of the beginning):
Figure 3: Sunrise in Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra.
As one can see in Figure 3, there is a threefold disposition of the

musical material. Above a bass pedal c, Strauss begins with a melodic
contour in the trumpets which consists only of the root c and the fifth
g (m. 5); the major third, which is essential to establish the key C
major, is missing. This major third follows at the semiquaver upbeat
(m. 6), which is also a chord of the full orchestra. But instead of the
expected C major chord in the measure following the upbeat the sur-
prised listener hears a c minor chord (m. 7). Essentially, one perceives
an ascending melodic line leading to a breakthrough, but the usual
330 Michael Walter
strained situation before the breakthrough is missing, or rather con-

densed to a semiquaver chord. In a second step, Strauss once more
uses the ascending melodic contour for the trumpets (m. 9). This time,
one might think erroneously, the music will lead to c minor because
the previous chord of the orchestra was c minor. But Strauss now
employs a C major chord in the full orchestra (m. 11), which can be
qualified as a second breakthrough. Before this second breakthrough,
we have an unclear and therefore strained harmonic situation. Yet, the
development to the relaxation of the breakthrough is still missing. The
two breakthroughs come too abruptly. In a third start-up of this begin-
ning, Strauss again uses the ascending melodic contour of the trum-
pets (m. 13), but now there is a short development of only four
measures to a real breakthrough with a crescendo and an ascending
melodic contour in the orchestra. The harmony becomes more compli-
cated compared as to the measures already heard, before Strauss
finally reaches the cadence leading to C major (mm. 18-19) so far
missed. Only now, precisely at the point of the breakthrough, does the
dynamic range open up to the fortissimo which is reached with the
same musical structures and means already employed by Haydn. The
two ‘fake breakthroughs’ before were only qualified as forte. There is
also a secondary layer of a melodic contour: every time one hears the
full orchestra, the range of the orchestra has been widened (i. e., the
highest notes in the orchestra are constantly going up).
In other words: Strauss’ technique is basically the same as the one
used by Haydn, despite the divergence of styles. The nevertheless
existing differences between the beginnings of Zarathustra and Le
Matin are the delay of the final breakthrough, a harmonic device
which was unthinkable in Haydn’s times, and an orchestration that
could not be employed by Haydn for pragmatic reasons: compared to
an orchestra of the 19th century, his orchestra was small, and some of
the instruments used by Strauss did not exist in the 18th century.
However, the musical structure of both sunrises is the same. This is
also the case with the other examples mentioned: Haydn’s Trio from
The Seasons, the sunrise in Verdi’s opera, and Strauss’ Alpine Sym-
phony. Suffice it here to demonstrate the similar structure with the
help of spectrograms (see Figure 4). They all have a typical triangular
structure, due to the development from piano to forte or fortissimo at
the final breakthrough. Differences in the spectrograms result from
the differences in orchestration and musical style.
Haydn, Le Matin
Haydn, The Seasons, Trio
Verdi, Attila, Prologue
Strauss, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Strauss, An Alpine Symphony, transitional section “Nacht” – “Sonnenaufgang”

(“Night” – “Sunrise”)
Figure 4: Spectrograms (breakthroughs = black lines)

332 Michael Walter
The last example from An Alpine Symphony needs a clarification

insofar as the title “Sonnenaufgang” (“Sunrise”) in the score marks
the moment of the breakthrough. “Sonnenaufgang” has a double
meaning in German. It can refer to the actual rising of the sun or to
the sun already risen. In the case of An Alpine Symphony, the latter
meaning is implied. Therefore, one finds the development to the
breakthrough at the end of the section before the “Sonnenaufgang”
which is entitled “Nacht” (“Night”). A perceptive listener will even
hear single sun rays during the transitional section from ‘night’ to
‘sunrise’.
As we have seen, cultural conditions are essential for the inter-
pretation of descriptive music. In the Trio of Haydn’s Seasons the
breakthrough is reached at the words “in flammender Majestät” (“in
flaming majesty”). Haydn at this point used the usual means of a
majestic portrayal in his epoch, namely dotted rhythms, trumpets and
kettledrums. These were the means to musically refer to the highest
possible (secular) person one could think of in Haydn’s times, which
was normally the sovereign (king, emperor). Here, of course, these
characteristics are metaphorically employed in order to portray the
sun as the ‘sovereign’ of nature or the highest possible ‘majesty’ in
the realm of nature. The cultural frame to which Haydn refers is the
ceremonial music of his time, where the connection of dotted rhythms
and brass instruments was a topos for the portrayal of majesty. Once
this cultural frame is not understood anymore, the musical sunrise can
lose its meaning for a listener.
A certain Elizabeth Eastlake wrote in the middle of the 19th centu-
ry with regard to Haydn’s sunrise in The Creation (No. 12, recitative
Uriel: “In vollem Glanze steiget jetzt die Sonne strahlend auf” [“In
splendour bright is rising now the sun and darts his rays”]):
But his [i. e., Haydn’s] ‘rising sun with darting rays’ is an utter failure: it is a
watchman’s lantern striking down a dark alley, not the orb of day illuminating the
earth. There is nothing of that ‘majestic crescendo of Nature’, as Carl Maria von
Weber has so musician-like expressed himself, and which he himself has rendered
in his little-known music of the Preciosa, where we feel pile upon pile of heavy
cloud to be slowly heaving and dispersing, while the majestic luminary ascends,
almost laboriously, here and there tearing a rent through a veil of vapour with a
thunderbolt bass note, till the whole earth is full of his glory. (Eastlake 1852: 52)
Haydn’s musical sunrise in this number of The Creation occurs at the
beginning of the recitative (mm. 1-15) before Uriel begins to sing.
The breakthrough is marked by ‘heavy’ dotted rhythms, which obvi-
ously meant nothing to Eastlake anymore. Her cultural frame was not
that of the ceremonial 18th century but that of the 19th century, as
becomes obvious not only by her reference to Weber’s opera but also
on the next page when she writes about the “sense of sublimity con-
veyed by [musical] storms and tempests” (ibid.: 53). Musical aesthet-
ics at this time relied more on intrinsic aesthetic categories than on
external ceremonial topoi. Eastlake found this intrinsic category in
Weber’s Preciosa, a Romantic opera with a very different aesthetic
background compared to Haydn’s oratorio. Obviously, Eastlake, as
was common around 1850, lacks the sensitivity for a historical under-
standing of music, which requires the awareness of divergent cultural
frames.
For Strauss, the purely aesthetic qualification of the ‘highest’ was
already the sublime in a Kantian sense. In Kant’s definition the sub-
lime is what is absolutely and without any comparison great (cf. Kant
1790, online: § 24). The sublime, therefore, is comparable only to
itself alone. “The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which
evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense.”
(Ibid.: § 25) With regard to nature, Kant defines: “Nature, therefore,
is sublime in such of its phenomena as in their intuition convey the
idea of their infinity.” (Ibid.: § 26) This idea of infinity is musically
conveyed by Strauss through the missing musical definition of a key
at the beginning of Zarathustra and the employment of the full
orchestra in the breakthroughs, although the latter cannot be ‘infinite’
in the proper sense of the word due to the technical restrictions of the
instruments.
The different referential devices for musical descriptions used by
Haydn and Strauss are a corollary of the different aesthetic assump-
tions depending on their epochs and cultural contexts. Both musical
descriptions were easily understood by contemporary audiences. But
as has been shown, there can be difficulties in understanding descrip-
tive music when the cultural conditions and the musical aesthetics
change. This is, of course, also true of literary works and paintings,
albeit to a lesser degree. Since music lacks a semantic meaning, how-
ever, the danger of a misconception of descriptions transmitted by this
medium is by far greater than in other arts and media. Beethoven
therefore felt the need to emphasize that the music of his Symphony
No. 6 (Pastoral Symphony) was not descriptive when he wrote “mehr
334 Michael Walter
Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerey”6 (‘more expression of sensa-

tions than painting’). Such a measure of caution was necessary
because, on the other hand, Beethoven provided the essential means
of recognizing descriptive music, i. e., titles to each of the five move-
ments, and so may have feared that the descriptive content would be
overstressed by contemporary listeners to the detriment of other
features of his composition. Yet, in spite of his cautioning comment,
it turned out that his sixth symphony became in many ways the proto-
type of a kind of music that testifies to a quality which at first sight
seems so alien to music, in particular to instrumental music, namely to
approach the condition of the descriptive.
References
Butterworth, Neil (1985). The Music of Aaron Copland. London:

Toccata Press.
Eastlake, Elizabeth (1852). Music and the Art of Dress: Two Essays
Reprinted from the ‘Quarterly Review’. London: John Murray.
Hahn, Arthur (c. 1912). “Also sprach Zarathustra: Tondichtung frei
nach Fr. Nietzsche. Op. 30”. Herwarth Walden, ed. Richard
Strauss: Symphonien und Tondichtungen. Erläutert von G.
Brecher, Georg Gräner, A. Hahn, W. Klatte, W. Mauke, A. Schatt-
mann, H. Teibler, H. Walden. Berlin: Schlesinger. 109-127.
Kant, Immanuel (1790, online). The Critique of Judgement. Transl.
James Creed Meredith.
http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/critique-of-judgment.txt
[20/11/2006].
Meteorology Online. “Eine Auswahl von Werken der klassischen
Musik mit Bezug zu meteorologischen Themen”.
http://www.met.fu-berlin.de/dmg/dmg_home/fagem/musikundwett
er.html [14/11/2006].
6
In the first print of the symphony one could read on the back of the part of the
first violin “Pastoral-Sinfonie oder Erinnerung an das Landleben (mehr Ausdruck der
Empfindung als Malerey)”. This remark goes back to a letter Beethoven wrote to his
publisher, Breitkopf und Härtel, in March 1809, in which he says: “Der Titel der
Sinfonie in F ist: Pastoral-Sinfonie oder Erinnerung an das Landleben Mehr Ausdruck
der Empfindung als Mahlerej”.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1968). Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für

Alle und Keinen (1882 – 1885). Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montanari,
eds. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 1. Berlin: de Gruyter.
— (online). Thus Spoke Zarathustra: An Adaptation Based on the
Thomas Common Translation. Paul Douglas, ed.
http://bellsouthpwp.net/m/s/mschelb/zarathustra.htm#A0
[20/11/2006].
Pollack, Howard (1999). Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an
Uncommon Man. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Schering, Arnold (1934). Beethoven in neuer Deutung. Die Shake-
speare-Streichquartette op. 74, op. 95, op. 127, op. 130, op. 131.
Die Shakespeare-Klaviersonaten op. 27 Nr. 1, op. 27 Nr. 2, op. 28,
op. 31 Nr. 1, op. 31 Nr. 2, op. 54, op. 57, op. 111. Die Schiller-
Klaviersonate op. 106. Leipzig: Kahnt.
— (1936). Beethoven und die Dichtung: Mit einer Einleitung zur Ge-
schichte und Ästhetik der Beethovendeutung. Berlin: Junker &
Dünnhaupt.
Walter, Michael (1994). Grundlagen der Musik des Mittelalters.
Schrift – Zeit – Raum. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler.
— (2004). “Music of Seriousness and Commitment”. The Cambridge
History of Twentieth-Century Music. Eds. Nicholas Cook,
Anthony Pople. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 286-306.
Notes on Contributors
Walter Bernhart (walter.bernhart@uni-graz.at) is Professor of Eng-

lish Literature at the University of Graz, Austria, chairman of the uni-
versity’s research and teaching unit “Literature and the Other Media”,
and founding and current president of the International Association
for Word and Music Studies (WMA). His main research interests are
intermedia studies, word and music studies, theory of lyric, and
rhythm studies. His numerous publications include ‘True Versifying’:
Studien zur elisabethanischen Verspraxis und Kunstideologie (Tü-
bingen, 1993); “Überlegungen zur Lyriktheorie aus erzähltheore-
tischer Sicht” (1993); “Iconicity and Beyond in ‘Lullaby for Jumbo’:
Semiotic Functions of Poetic Rhythm” (1999); “Lied som intermedial
konstform” (2002); “The ‘Destructiveness of Music’: Functional In-
termedia Disharmony in Popular Songs” (2002); “Narrative Framing
in Schumann’s Piano Pieces” (2005); “‘Musikalische Verse’: ‘Ich
weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten’” (2006); “Myth-making Opera: Da-
vid Malouf and Michael Berkeley’s Jane Eyre” (2007). He is Exec-
utive Editor of two book series, Word and Music Studies (WMS) and
Studies in Intermediality (SIM), and has (co)edited nine individual
volumes.
Johann Konrad Eberlein (konrad.eberlein@uni-graz.at) has been

Professor of art history at the University of Graz, Austria since 1998.
He studied art history, history and classical archaeology in Erlangen,
Munich, Freiburg and Bonn. In 1978 he obtained his PhD in Würz-
burg and became associate Professor in Kassel in 1992. Since 1985 he
has taught at the Universities of Munich, Frankfort, Kassel, Inns-
bruck, Salzburg, and Bern. Besides many articles, the following publi-
cations are amongst his most important ones: Apparitio regis –
revelatio veritatis. Studien zur Darstellung des Vorhangs in der bil-
denden Kunst von der Spätantike bis zum Ende des Mittelalters
(Wiesbaden, 1982); Lothar Strauch, 1907 - 1991. Plastik und Gra-
phik. Verzeichnis der Werke des Künstlers, mit einem Beitrag von
Theodore Klitzke (Berlin, 1993); Paul Klee (Munich, 1994); Miniatur
und Arbeit. Das Medium Buchmalerei (Frankfort/Main, 1995);
338 Notes on Contributors
Albrecht Dürer (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2003/2007); “Angelus

novus”. Paul Klees Bild und Walter Benjamins Deutung (Freiburg i.
Br./Berlin, 2006); Noriko Hori. Leben und Werk (Tokyo, 2006);
Harald de Bary. Leben und Werk (Frankfort/Main, 2006). With
Christine Mirwald-Jakobi he wrote Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen
Kunst. Eine Quellenkunde (Berlin, 1996/2004).
Arno Heller (arno.heller@uni-graz.at) is Professor emeritus of Amer-

ican Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. His publications con-
centrate on 19th and 20th century American literature and film (mainly
on sociohistorical themes such as maturation, initiation, identity for-
mation, utopian and dystopian thought, violence, transatlantic rela-
tions, cultural and comparative studies, regionalism, and ecology). He
has published Odyssee zum Selbst: Zur Gestaltung jugendlicher Iden-
titätssuche im neueren amerikanischen Roman (Innsbruck, 1973); Ge-
waltphantasien: Untersuchtungen zu einem Phänomen des amerika-
nischen Gegenwartsromans (Tübingen, 1990); Der amerikanische
Südwesten: Geschichte, Kultur, Mythos (Innsbruck, 2006). He has
edited and co-edited several books and published over 100 articles in
international journals and essay collections.
Susanne Knaller (susann.knaller@uni-graz.at) is Professor of Ro-

mance Philology and Comparative Literature at the University of
Graz, Austria. Her main research interests include aesthetic theories
(18th to 20th centuries), theories of allegory, the history and definition
of the notion of authenticity, postcolonial literature, and conceptions
of reality since the Age of Enlightenment. Recent publications are:
Ein Wort aus der Fremde. Geschichte und Theorie des ästhetischen
Begriffs Authentizität (Heidelberg, 2007); Authentizität. Diskussion
eines ästhetischen Begriffs (Munich, 2006; co-edited with Harro
Müller); Zeitgenössische Allegorien – Literatur, Kunst, Theorie (Mu-
nich, 2003); Reformulating Allegory: Literature, Theory, Film (Spe-
cial issue of The Germanic Review 77, 2, 2002). “Das Gedächtnis der
Allegorie. Am Beispiel von Rachel Whitereads Holocaust-Mahnmal”
(2002). “Scattered Voices. Some Remarks on a Narrative Theory of
Postcolonial Storytelling” (1999). A collection of essays edited by
her, Realitätskonstruktionen in der zeitgenössischen Kultur. Beiträge
zu Literatur, Kunst, Fotografie, Film und zum Alltagsleben (2008), is
forthcoming.
Notes on Contributors 339
Doris Mader (doris.mader@uni-graz.at) is Assistant Professor of

English Literature at the University of Graz, Austria. Her main re-
search interests are English literature of the 20th century, the interrela-
tions between radio and literature, and contemporary British theatre.
Previous publications include a study of Tom Stoppard’s stage plays:
Wirklichkeitsillusion und Wirklichkeitserkenntnis. Eine themen- und
strukturanalytische Untersuchung ausgewählter großer Bühnendra-
men Tom Stoppards (Heidelberg, 2000) and several essays on audio-
literature as an intermedial phenomenon: “‘Shut Your Eyes and
Listen’ – Ein Plädoyer zur Be-Sinnung der (anglistischen) Literatur-
wissenschaft auf Audioliteratur” (2002); “‘I saw it on the radio’, ‘I
listened to the book’ – Audioliterature in the Age of Glocalized
Communication” (2003). She has co-edited a collection of essays on
English literature and the tradition, Metamorphosen. Englische Lite-
ratur und die Tradition (Heidelberg, 2006), which includes her most
recent contribution to the study of audioliterature: “Audioliteratur und
intermediale Tradition: Zu den Metamorphosen von Gattungskonven-
tionen in zeitgenössischen Radiomonologen: Dramatischer Monolog,
Melodrama und Monodrama”. She is currently preparing a mono-
graph devoted to the systematic study of audioliterature in the context
of intermediality.
Ansgar Nünning (Ansgar.Nuenning@anglistik.uni-giessen.de) is

Professor and Chair of English and American Literary and Cultural
Studies at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen. He is the founding
director of the “Giessener Graduiertenzentrum Kulturwissenschaften”
(GGK), which is currently expanded into an International Graduate
Centre for the Study of Culture, and the Head of the International PhD
programme “Literary and Cultural Studies”. He has recently co-
authored An Introduction to the Study of English and American Liter-
ature (Barcelona et al., 2004, with Vera Nünning), edited the Metzler
Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory (Stuttgart, 1998, 3rd ed.
2004), Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: Theoretische Grundlagen
– Ansätze – Perspektiven (Stuttgart, 2003), Kulturwissenschaftliche
Literaturwissenschaft (Tübingen, 2004, with Roy Sommer), as well as
Erzähltextanalyse und Gender Studies (Stuttgart, 2004, with Vera
Nünning), Medien des kollektiven Gedächtnisses: Konstruktivität –
Historizität – Kulturspezifizität (Berlin/New York, NY, 2004, with
340 Notes on Contributors
Astrid Erll) and Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft

(Berlin/New York, NY, 2005, with Astrid Erll).
Götz Pochat (goetz.pochat@uni-graz.at) studied comparative litera-

ture and art history at the University of Stockholm, where he was
assistant and associate professor from 1971 to 1981. From 1982 to
1987 he was Professor of Art History at the RWTH Aachen, Germany
and as of 1987 Chair of the Art History Department at the Karl-
Franzens-University in Graz, Austria. His most important publications
include: Der Exotismus während des Mittelalters und der Renais-
sance (Stockholm, 1970); Figur und Landschaft – Eine historische
Interpretation der Landschaftsmalerei von der Antike bis zur Renais-
sance (Berlin/New York, 1973); Der Symbolbegriff in der Ästhetik
und Kunstwissenschaft (Cologne, 1983); Geschichte der Ästhetik und
Kunsttheorie – Von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne,
1986); Theater und bildende Kunst im Mittelalter und in der Renais-
sance in Italien (Graz, 1990); Bild/Zeit: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruk-
tur in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur frühen Neuzeit
(Vienna, 1996); Bild/Zeit: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der
bildenden Kunst des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 2004).
Klaus Rieser (klaus.rieser@uni-graz.at) is Associate Professor of

American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, where he teaches
mostly in cultural studies and in film studies. Before this employment,
he was a lecturer at various departments of the University of Inns-
bruck, where he gained his “Doctor of Philosophy” (PhD) in 1993. In
2006, he completed his “Habilitation” at the University of Graz in the
area of “American Studies (Film)”. His major areas of research com-
prise US film, representations of gender and ethnicity, and cultural
studies. His dissertation on the representation and the metaphorical
functions of immigration in film, Passagen zum Ende des Regenbo-
gens: Ethno-Amerikanische Pidgin- und Interkulturen im Migrations-
film, has been published by Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier in 1996.
He also co-wrote (with Susanne Rieser) Daughter Rite (1978) und
Daughters of Chaos (1980): Filmanalysen (Trier, 1996). Beyond that,
he has published a number of articles on film and co-edited two
volumes on cultural and literary studies. His most recent publication
is Borderlines and Passages: Liminal Masculinities in Film (Essen,
2006). He is board member of the Austrian Association of American
Notes on Contributors 341
Studies, chairs the European Scholars Group of the Society for Cine-
ma and Media Studies and co-edits the book series American Studies
in Austria.
Michael Walter (michael.walter@uni-graz.at) is Professor of Musi-

cology at the University of Graz, Austria. He has edited and co-edited
several books, among them three volumes of the Jahrbuch für Opern-
forschung (1985, 1986, 1990) and Text und Musik: Neue Perspektiven
der Theorie (Munich, 1992). He is author of Hitler in der Oper:
Deutsches Musikleben 1919-1945 (Stuttgart, 1995/2000), “Die Oper
ist ein Irrenhaus”: Sozialgeschichte der Oper im 19. Jahrhundert
(Stuttgart, 1997/Tokyo 2000), Richard Strauss und seine Zeit (Laaber,
2000), and Haydns Sinfonien: Ein musikalischer Werkführer (Mu-
nich, 2007). He has also published numerous articles and book contri-
butions on the music history of the Middle Ages, the history of opera,
classical music, Richard Strauss, and on music and musical life in the
first half of the twentieth century.
Werner Wolf (werner.wolf@uni-gaz.at) is Professor of English and

General Literature at the University of Graz, Austria and member of
the executive board of the International Association for Word and
Music Studies (WMA). His main areas of research are literary theory
(in particular aesthetic illusion, narratology, and literary self-referen-
tiality), functions of literature, eighteenth- to twenty-first-century
English fiction, eighteenth- and twentieth-century drama, as well as
intermedial relations and comparisons between literature and other
media, notably music and the visual arts. His extensive publications
include, besides numerous essays, Ästhetische Illusion und Illusions-
durchbrechung in der Erzählkunst (Tübingen 1993) and The Musical-
ization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality
(Amsterdam 1999). He is also co-editor of volumes 1, 3 and 5 of the
book series Word and Music Studies published by Rodopi (Word and
Music Studies: Defining the Field 1999, Word and Music Studies:
Essays on the Song Cycle and on Defining the Field 2001, Essays on
Literature and Music by Steven Paul Scher 2004) as well as of Fram-
ing Borders in Literature and Other Media, vol. 1 of the series Stud-
ies in Intermediality.

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Description in Literature

and Other Media

The book series STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM), launched in

STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM) publishes, generally on an annual

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Preface .............................................................................................. vii

Description in Literature and Related (Partly) Verbal Media

Johann Konrad Eberlein

Notes on Contributors ..................................................................... 337

Graz, July 2007 Werner Wolf

Description has traditionally been viewed from a monodisciplinary and mono-

1. Introduction: The transgeneric and transmedial relevance of

Descriptions occur in very different forms and situations, as the fol-

Illustration 1: “Gryphon” from: Carroll 1865/1970: 125

These variants of description illustrate at least two basic features of

sively been considered from a monomedial perspective, with literary

In the gestation of the present volume literary studies provided the

with a theoretical interest5 – is dealt with in Ansgar Nünning’s con-

2. The descriptive in general: major contexts of the descriptive

2.1. The descriptive as a cognitive frame

As one will doubtlessly have recognized, Quotation 3 is a description,

“of assigning the representation of objects to a distinct mode of

tures of ‘the descriptive’, the plural ‘descriptions’ may, in addition,

2.2. Major contexts and basic functions of the descriptive

In a famous passage in Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuch-

All of these functions refer to description as a special frame in special

Owing to their typically detailed quality, descriptions in everyday

This leads us to the question as to whether description, in everyday

relevant for this context, which is to a large extent an aesthetic one.

provide more or less objective facts rather than interpretations,

place in it – and is hence implicated in the construction of

2.3. The location of the descriptive/description within a typology of

ing and music with reference to their respective descriptive potentials,

it can be the dominant, then informing the macro-level of the genre or

1) semiotic the descriptive narrative argumentative other

2) media in which verbal media, verbal media, verbal media, …

3) examples of (sub-) still life, soap opera, philosophical …

descriptive argu- narrative descrip- narra- the main narrative

Figure 1: The descriptive in the context of a typology of semiotic macro-modes,

2.4. Content-related and formal/presentational characteristics and

Secondly, descriptions, again like narratives, focus on concrete

cameras (cf. Bal 1981/1982: 132) and may be centred on dynamic

ders within possible worlds, while in narratives such borders (which

The inclusion of ‘internal’, mental objects into the field of poten-

As we will see, it is through this subject-centred pole that attitudes

is in focus. A further major difference between narrativity and de-

dismissed without much ado, namely the vexed question of whether

organization in narratives39). If, therefore, causal and teleological con-

2.5. Description and related notions in the context of literature and

on ‘existential’ phenomena45: while the typical suggestion of nar-

2.6. Intermediate summary: definition of the descriptive in literature

signs in representations which can inform the macro-level of certain

2.7. The concretization of descriptive objects in the recipient’s mind

(see Walter Bernhart’s contribution to this volume). What Gombrich

3. Descriptive potentials and limits of individual media

As stated in the previous chapter, the concretization of descriptions

does the dominant quality of signs have on the recipient’s share

3.1. Description in a pictorial medium: painting

scriptive potential to other media according to the aforementioned cri-

frame ‘description’ is applicable here, sounds banal and should there-

Illustration 2: Piet Mondrian. “Komposition” (“Composition”, 1930)

The non-descriptiveness of such abstract works of art clearly resides

Yet, ‘abstraction’ is not a monolithic category. Rather, there are