The Poetics of Description
Subtitle: Imagined Places in European Literature
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: December 12, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781403974891
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Literature (Specific Aspects); Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Europe; European - General; Literary Criticism & Collections / European; History and criticism; European literature; Imaginary places in literature
Description: "The Poetics of Description tells a story that begins in classical antiquity with ecphrasis, the art of describing the world so vividly that the audience could become imaginative eyewitnesses. The story continues with the European writers from Milton to Lord Byron who inherited this tradition and used it to describe places, both natural and man-made, to serve as figures for mind, memory, and creative perception. It comes to a surprising conclusion when, in the middle of the twentieth century, one prominent scholar's misunderstanding limited ecphrasis to descriptions of works of art, and what had begun as an ideal of immediacy was transformed into nearly its opposite, a preoccupation with representation of representation."--BOOK JACKET.