'Many a saute made I to this mirrour': Ekphrasis and Agency in Late Medieval English Literature

Despite the fact that there have been recent attempts to broaden ekphrasis into its antique and medieval sense, these attempts have not taken the concept of living presence into account. My thesis takes this more generous sense of ekphrasis as a point of departure. I draw on the attitudes of Christianity towards the representation of the divinity in verbal and visual terms (including the Eucharist) to argue that there are fundamental differences between the two media. The concept of living presence response is introduced as a tool to analyse the agency of the visual representations upon the worshippers. Drawing on works from Geoffrey Chaucer and on the anonymous Piers the Plowman's Crede, I suggest that the broad sense of ekphrasis should be further enlarged to include any textual attempts to reproduce, or any textual awareness of, living presence response. This inclusion, in turn, must encompass the role of the receiver in allowing the effects to occur in the first place. I...Show moreDespite the fact that there have been recent attempts to broaden ekphrasis into its antique and medieval sense, these attempts have not taken the concept of living presence into account. My thesis takes this more generous sense of ekphrasis as a point of departure. I draw on the attitudes of Christianity towards the representation of the divinity in verbal and visual terms (including the Eucharist) to argue that there are fundamental differences between the two media. The concept of living presence response is introduced as a tool to analyse the agency of the visual representations upon the worshippers. Drawing on works from Geoffrey Chaucer and on the anonymous Piers the Plowman's Crede, I suggest that the broad sense of ekphrasis should be further enlarged to include any textual attempts to reproduce, or any textual awareness of, living presence response. This inclusion, in turn, must encompass the role of the receiver in allowing the effects to occur in the first place. I challenge two claims: that ekphrasis is a narcissistic mode of literary discourse; that Chaucer is paying homage to the inseparability of different media. Recommendations for further research include the investigation of whether there is a correlation between ekphrasis viewed as lifelikeness and iconoclastic periods, on the one hand, and between living presence response and medieval theories of sight, such as Roger Bacon's, on the other.Show less

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'Many a saute made I to this mirrour': Ekphrasis and Agency in Late Medieval English Literature