Ekphrasis in the Anthropocene: Mediating the Ecological Crisis
Surprisingly many contemporary Anglophone poets and novelists employ ekphrasis as an intermedial means to present climate change, water contamination, biodiversity loss, and human-caused extinction. Understood as a conceptual space for verbal techniques of zooming in, for focusing on moments of look...
محفوظ في:
| الحاوية / القاعدة: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ranam, |
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| المؤلف الرئيسي: | |
| التنسيق: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| اللغة: | Anglais |
| منشور في: |
Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines
2026
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| الموضوعات: | |
| الوصول للمادة أونلاين: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| الملخص: | Surprisingly many contemporary Anglophone poets and novelists employ ekphrasis as an intermedial means to present climate change, water contamination, biodiversity loss, and human-caused extinction. Understood as a conceptual space for verbal techniques of zooming in, for focusing on moments of looking, for negotiating visual regimes, power relationships, as well as ethical and epistemological set-ups, ekphrasis helps to foreground that which is normally kept in the background. Starting from the conviction that literature has performative qualities, this article asks how the ekphrastic aesthetics of poets and novelists can open new spaces for epistemological transcriptions, ethical approaches and political engagement in the Anthropocene. The analyses of works by Franco-Welsh poet and trained sculptor Pascale Petit, and Canadian poet Di Brandt invite their readers to think about western systems of values in connection with ecological questions. Novelists like Richard Powers and Teju Cole shift their readers’ attention to endangered environments and species of flora and fauna in the Anthropocene. By employing ekphrastic modes with their potential to enhance emotions, they highlight the ecological polycrisis and raise questions of imagination, representation, political engagement, and accountability. |
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