Ut sculptura poesisan example from Scott Hightower's poetry
ISSN: 0212-4130
Year of publication: 2013
Issue: 31
Pages: 35-48
Type: Article
More publications in: Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna
Abstract
Poetry has always been attracted by the visual arts, and it has been so manifested, among other practices, through ekphrasis (that is, the verbal description of an image). However, there are few poets, comparatively speaking, who opt for the description of a sculpture instead of a painting. In the present article, the origins of ekphrasis in sculpture are studied, and the poetry of the contemporary American author Scott Hightower is analyzed. Thus, the aesthetic disparity which rises from the contemplation of a past monument of exceptional nuances —the statue of the fallen angel— with the eyes of postmodernity emerges, among other concepts.
Bibliographic References
- Abrams, M.H., et al. (2000): «Introduction to Paradise Lost», in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. i. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1815-1816.
- Bohn, W. (1986): The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry 1914-1928. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Carbajosa, N. (2000): «An Interview with Scott Hightower», El coloquio de los perros 25, ULR: http:// www.elcoloquiodelosperros.net/numero25/olf25hi.html. 26/04/2011.
- Da Vinci, L. (1956): Treatise on Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Dundas, J. (1993): Pencils, Rhetorique: Renaissance Poets and the Art of Painting. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
- Giannakopoulou, L. (2007): The Power of Pygmalion: Ancient Greek Sculpture in Modern Greek Poetry, 1860-1960. Bern: Peter Lang.
- Heffernan, J.A. (1993): Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Hein, H. (1996): «What is Public Art? Time, Place, and Meaning», The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 1 (Winter): 1-7.
- Hightower, S. (2012): Self-Evident. Kingston, RI: Barrow Street Press.
- Hightower, S. (2001): Tin Can Tourist. NY: Fordham University Press.
- Hulse, C. (1990): The Rule of Art: Literature and Painting in the Renaissance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Jefferson, T. «Letter to Maria Cosway in Paris, April 24, 1788», ULR: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/ tj3/writings/brf/jefl68.htm. 10/05/2011.
- Lambert, G. (2007): Caravaggio. Köln: Taschen.
- Lessing, G.E. (1985): «Laocoon, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry», in H.B. Nisbet (ed.), German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Martín Gaite, C. (2001): Los parentescos. Barcelona: Anagrama.
- Mitchell, W.J.T. (1980): «Spatial Form in Literature», in The Language of Images. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 271-299.
- Moore, T. (2010): Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems. London: General Books.
- Mudrovic, M. (2012): «Escultura y escritura: dos poemas ecfrásticos de Luis Javier Moreno». Unpublished paper.
- North, M. (1990): «The Public as Sculpture: From Heavenly City to Mass Ornament», Critical Inquiry 16:4 (Summer), 860-879.
- North, M. (1983): «The Ambiguity of Repose: Sculpture and the Public Art of W. B. Yeats», ELH: English Literary History 50:2, 379-400.
- Pingeot, A. (2000): «Sculpture and Literature in Nineteenth-Century France», in K. Aspley et al. (eds.), From Rodin to Giacometti: Sculpture and Literature in France, 1880-1950. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 37-48.
- Pound, E. (1970): A Memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska. N.Y.: New Directions.
- Reyero, C. (2002): Escultura, museo y estado de la España del siglo XIX: historia, significado y catálogo de la colección nacional de escultura moderna, 1856-1906. Alicante: Fundación Eduardo Capa.
- Sharrati, P. (2000): «Ut Sculptura Poesis», in K. Aspley et al. (eds.), From Rodin to Giacometti: Sculpture and Literature in France, 1880-1950. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1-16.
- Steiner, W. (1982): The Colors of Rhetoric: Problems in the Relation between Modern Literature and Painting. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Yeats, W.B. (2000): Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney. London: Faber & Faber.