Description
Book SynopsisThe emergence of photography and film in the twentieth century helped to create a shift from a culture of words to a culture of images. Since then, the question of how literature engages the visual arts has become a key question for literary studies. This extended treatment of the poetic representation of visual art examines a wide range of figures, from W. B. Yeats and Marianne Moore to Anne Sexton and Ted Hughes. Elegantly and persuasively written, the study also contains a rich sample of images that allows readers to see the same works these poets were addressing. By investigating the complex, changing relations between twentieth-century poetry, visual art and audience, it considers the way in which poetic responses to visual art place the lyric firmly within the social world. For those interested in the interplay between poetry and visual art, this will be essential reading.
Trade Review'It is because Bergmann Loizeaux widens the scope of poets' involvement with visual arts considerably and because she suggests the many sophisticated ways in which poets connect with others through their ekphrastic poetry that Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts will be read and studied avidly in the coming decade.' English Studies
Table of ContentsIntroduction: the engaging eye: ekphrasis in twentieth-century poetry; 1. Private lives in public places: Yeats and Durcan in Dublin's galleries; 2. Bystanding in Auden's 'Musée'; 3. Women looking: the feminist ekphrasis of Marianne Moore and Adrienne Rich; 4. Ekphrasis in conversation: Anne Sexton and W. D. Snodgrass on Van Gogh; 5. Ekphrasis in collaboration: Ted Hughes and Leonard Baskin's Cave Birds: An Alchemical Cave Drama; 6. Ekphrasis in the book: Rita Dove's African American museum.
