The Poetics of Description: Imagined Places in European Literature [Hardcover]

This book tells a remarkable story that begins in classical antiquity with ecphrasis, the art of describing the world so vividly that the audience could become imaginative eyewitnesses, and the events that caused an ideal of immediacy to be transformed into nearly its opposite, a preoccupation with representation of representation.Introduction: Ecphrasis, Description, and the Imagined Place As If Present : Classical Ecphrasis Unity, Form, and Figuration A Sylvan Scene The Universe Dead or Alive: Gilpin, Wordsworth, and the Picturesque The Visionary Eye: Wordsworth's Anti-picturesque Excursion Till the Place Became Religion : Byron's Coliseum Epilogue: Immediacy

Essential reading for all Romanticists.[Koelb] has made it impossible for any responsible scholar to talk about ekphrasis in the same way again. - Studies in Romanticism Koelb's book is striking for the extraordinary depth and range with which her thesis is sustained. Her work demonstrates a command of literary history and critical commentary reminiscent of an E.R. Curtius, a C.S. Lewis, or an Owen Barfield. In a day when much literary discourse seems to exist in a self-imposed vacuum, Koelb's approach is indeed original, even radical. - Paul T Piehler, Department of English, McGill University

The Poetics of Description is sure to shift the direction of poetic criticism for years to come. Koelb demonstrates how romantic nature poetry derives from classical descriptive verse, a connection obscured for the past half century by misunderstandings of the term ecphrasis. Koelb's findings compel critical reassessment of major romantic poems while providing a theoretical foundation for revisionary studies into every variety of descriptive poetry. - Karl Kroeber, Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University

This wonderful book traces the topic of ecphrasis, primarily as description of places, from its roots in Homer and Greek rhetoric, through Vergil, Quinl³