“The Oval Portrait” on Art and Art on “The Oval Portrait”: A Case Study of Ekphrasis and Book Illustration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17561/grove.v31.7392Keywords:
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Oval Portrait”, ekphrasis, book illustration, art-literature relationship, readers' engagementAbstract
This article explores the relationship between ekphrasis and book illustration. To this aim, it analyses Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” and compares it with three different renditions in painting made by Jean-Paul Laurens, Arthur Rackham and Santiago Caruso. After some theoretical considerations to clarify what is understood by ekphrasis, this paper proves how it is possible to understand “The Oval Portrait” as an example of ekphrastic literature. From this standpoint, and drawing from secondary literature on how the vampiric undertones of the short story explore the relationship between art and life, I analyse how the relationship between art and literature is portrayed in the story. These notions lead to the analysis on how the tale’s topic and its ekphrastic nature have influenced the way in readers’ engage with the story and how it is depicted by book illustrators.
Downloads
References
Primary sources
Caruso, Santiago. The Oval Portrait I. 2018. http://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10157421560758475&set=the-oval-portrait-i-written-by-edgarallanpoe-illustrated-by-santiagocaruso-wwwsa. Accessed 17 Dec, 2021.
Caruso, Santiago. The Oval Portrait II. 2018. http://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10157422011698475&set=the-oval-portrait-i-written-by-edgarallanpoe-illustrated-by-santiagocaruso-wwwsa. Accessed 17 Dec, 2021.
Laurens, Jean-Paul. “The Oval Portrait.” [n.d.]. The Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. John H. Ingram. G. Barrie: https://ia804603.us.archive.org/16/items/eootaleseapoe02edgarich/eootaleseapoe02edgarich.pdf Accessed 15 Dec, 2021.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Oval Portrait.” Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Ed. John S. Whitley. Wordsworth Editions, 2008, pp. 208-210.
Rackham, Arthur. “The Oval Portrait”. Poe’s ‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination’. London: G. G. Harrap & Co., 1935, pp. 128-129. http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/poes-tales-of-mystery-and-imagination-illustrated-by-arthur-rackham Accessed Dec 16, 2021.
Secondary sources
Brylowe, Thora. Romantic Art in Practice: Cultural Work and the Sister Arts, 1760-1820. Cambridge University Press, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108550949
Cannon, Michael von. “A Tale of Optics: Poe, Visual Culture, and Antebellum Literary Celebrity.” Poe Studies, vol. 47, 2014, pp. 36-54.
Cantalupo, Barbara. Poe and the Visual Arts. Pennsylvania University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271064284
Caruso, Santiago. “Curriculum.” Santiago Caruso, 2020-2021, https://santiagocaruso.com.ar/curriculum/ Accessed Sep. 5, 2022
Cheeke, Stephen. Writing for Art: The Aesthetics for Ekphrasis. Manchester University Press, 2008.
Douglass, Clare. “Text and Image Together: The Influence of Illustration and the Victoria Market in the Novels of Wilkie Collins.” Wilkie Collins Interdisciplinary Essays. Ed. Andrew Mangham. Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2007, pp. 56-73.
Freedman, William. “Poe's Oval Portrait of ‘The Oval Portrait’”. Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism, vol. 32, no. 1/2, 2009, pp. 7-12, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-6095.1999.tb00105.x
Gibian, Peter. “The Image and Its Discontents: Hawthorne, Poe, and the Double Bind of 'Iconoclash.'” Journal of the Short Story in English, vol. 56, 2011, pp. 109-113.
Ginsburg, Michal Peled. Portrait Stories. Fordham University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823262625-003
Haselstein, Ulla. “Arabeske/Allegorie: Zum Verhältnis Von Bild Und Text in Edgar Allan Poes Erzählung ‘The Oval Portrait.’” Poetica, vol. 30, no. 3/4, 1998, pp. 435-452, https://doi.org/10.30965/25890530-0300304010
Heffernan, James A. W. “Ekphrasis and Representation.” New Literary History, vol. 22, no. 2, 1991, pp. 297-316, https://doi.org/10.2307/469040
Kafalenos, Emma. “Effects of Sequence, Embedding, and Ekphrasis in Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’”. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Blackwell Publishing, 2005, pp. 253-268, https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996935.ch17
Letalleur-Sommer, Séverine. “Rôle de la vision et du contexte visuel dans la construction du sens – The Oval Portrait.” Études de stylistique anglaise, vol. 5, 2013, pp. 99-114, https://doi.org/10.4000/esa.1033
Magistrale, Tony, and Jessica Slayton. The Great Illustrators of Edgar Allan Poe. Anthem Press, 2021, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1mp8v5x
Meek, Richard. “Introduction: Shakespeare, Narrative, and Art.” Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare. Ed. Richard Meek. Ashgate, 2009, pp. 1-27.
Miyazawa, Naomi. “Poe, the Portrait, and the Daguerreotype: Poe’s Living Dead and the Visual Arts.” Poe Studies, vol. 50, 2017, pp. 88-106.
Nielsen, Henrik Skov. “The Unnatural in E.A. Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait.” Beyond Classical Narration: Transmedial and Unnatural Challenges. Eds. Jan Alber and Per Krogh Hansen. De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 239-260, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110353242.239
Rigal-Aragón, Margarita and Fernando González-Moreno. “The Pictorial Richness of Poe’s Oeuvre”. Painting Words: Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text. Eds. Beatriz González-Moreno and Fernando González-Moreno. Routledge, 2020, pp. 93-112, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429242601
Spitzer, Leo. “The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ or Content vs. Metagrammar.” Comparative Literature, vol.7, no. 3, 1955, pp. 203-225, https://doi.org/10.2307/1768227
Twitchell, James. “Poe's 'The Oval Portrait' and the Vampire Motif.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 14, no. 4, 1977, pp. 387-393.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Beatriz Garrigós García
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Also, authors will retain the rights on their work, even if they will be granting The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies a non-exclusive right of use to reproduce, edit, distribute, publicly communicate and show their work. Therefore, authors are free to engage in additional, independent contracts for non-exclusive distribution of the works published in this journal (such as uploading them to an institutional repository or publishing them in a book), as long as the fact that the manuscripts were first published in this journal is acknowledged.
