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Course Description

Summary

Defined as a “place for writing,” our scriptorium will function as a class to explore the many manifestations of ekphrasis, which can be simply defined as an artistic description of a work of art, a rhetorical device in which one medium of art responds to another. In this writing-intensive course, we will study examples of ekphrasis—from the Classical era to Postmodernism—and create our own responses to works of art. While we develop our reading and writing skills, we will learn new ways to do research, integrate evidence, and argue a persuasive thesis. We will ask ourselves these pressing questions: In which ways can we accurately and imaginatively describe a work of art? How can we capture a work’s meaning, form, and effect on the audience? What are the conflicts and possibilities between literature and the visual arts? Texts may include readings from Homer, Ovid, Freud, Keats, Shelley, Wilde, Rilke, Auden, Williams, Loy, Stevens, Barthes, Ashbery, Sontag, Young.