Introduction: from paragone to encounter

Abstract

Ekphrasis – the verbal representation of visual art – has traditionally been regarded as a form of paragone or competition between different forms of representation. The Introduction advocates a more reciprocal model of ekphrasis that involves an encounter or exchange between word and image. It outlines the ways in which the paragone has dominated critical conceptions of intermedial relationships. Ekphrastic works of various periods and styles have been read through the paradigm of the paragone that was established in the Renaissance; and yet this was not the only model available during that period. It is argued that the agonistic model was the primary means of conceptualising ekphrasis during the first ‘ekphrastic turn’ of the 1990s, and that this model has continued to be influential into the twenty-first century. However recent critics and theorists working across various disciplines and periods have started to interrogate this influential paradigm.