Ekphrasis and the Visual Imagination in Antiquity Conference at Yale University

In the study of the ancient world the relationship between texts and images has posed problems for modern scholars and ancients alike. Citing examples ranging from Plato’s mimetic claim that art is an imitation of an imitation to the anti-iconic political rhetoric of ancient Israelite prophets, scholars suggest that words were often at odds with pictures in antiquity. Mirroring this ancient complexity, the modern discussion has taken place mostly in siloed, intradisciplinary treatments of either texts or images, which have generally privileged linguistic discursive practices (e.g., semiotics) for defining the ontology of the visual. Recent interdisciplinary discussions, however, have destabilized such word-image hierarchies, instead admitting to a complex nexus of visual and verbal interaction taking place in both visual and verbal media. Scholars have increasingly treated ekphrasis as an important locus for investigating the text-image dialogic. Ekphrasis is a rhetorical feature through which a visual phenomenon—commonly, though not always, a work of visual art—is described verbally. Through its poetics ekphrasis thus offers access to ancient conceptualizations of the word-image nexus.

As a rhetorical literary phenomenon, ekphrasis occurs in a wide range of ancient literary traditions. Recent studies have attempted to articulate the many ways in which ekphrasis functions rhetorically within these traditions, both as an affective literary tool and as a means for conceptualizing the visual. This discussion spans several disciplines, including philosophy, art history, comparative literature, classics, biblical studies, and Near Eastern studies. The relatively few scholars making the most significant recent contributions to the study of ekphrasis in antiquity are spread all over the globe, ranging from Australia to North America to western Europe. The purpose of this conference is to bring together these international scholars and experts on this topic in order to (a) facilitate real-time, interdisciplinary conversation on the most pressing issues on the topic of ekphrasis in antiquity and (b) to signal the relevance of biblical and Northwest Semitic texts by bringing these data into the conversation for the first time. Scholars will come together over a day and a half to share their most recent research and to push the boundaries of our conceptualizations of ekphrasis and its effects for understanding texts and images in both antiquity and modernity. This conference will further research on ekphrasis as a locus of visual and verbal interaction by:

1. Bringing together scholars interested in word-image relations in a configuration that includes literary traditions which have been largely absent from interdisciplinary conversations, in particular the Hebrew Bible, Northwest Semitic literatures, cuneiform Akkadian texts, the New Testament, and early Christian literatures.
2. Comparing nuances of the poetics of ekphrasis in the unique genres that occur within these literary traditions.
3. Reconsidering the ancient debate on the limits of ekphrasis and the differences between concepts of ekphrasis in antiquity and modernity.
4. Considering the use of ekphrasis as a rumination on the ontology of visual representation and the limits of its reproducibility in an alternative medium.