Ekphrastic Medieval Visions A New Discussion In Interarts Theory Claire Barbetti by Claire Barbetti 9780230370531, 9781349292356, 9783720128094, 0230370535, 1349292354, 3720128091 instant download after payment.

The mystical vision text is a special ekphrastic creature. She is wilier than her cousin the dream vision; she often hides behind great slabs of spiritual truth so that her diaphanous layers are neither disturbed nor divulged. Her claim to verity in representation, after all, lies often in the denial that representation is possible. This denial, however, goes hand-in-hand with a glorious effusion of represented event, sensory and structural detail, and explanation of meaning. Both denial and description follow well-trod conventions in the long line of mystical vision texts: inexpressibility topos, affected modesty, allusion and manipulation of Scripture and icon, courtly love dialogue between lover and beloved, and so on. The mystical vision text is clearly a genre possessing its own history and rules of composition but she also seems to represent an experience by the mystic of a mystical event, an immediate consciousness of Other, union with the Divine. Is she one or the other? Is she a representation of a mediated visual representation/composition—and therefore ekphrastic—or is she the words as they are immediately given to the mystic author? Where does she come from? She is not an easy lady nor does she deign to be poked about by the hardscrabble postmodern theorists of aesthetics. And they have largely ignored her.