Abstract
What is the relationship between epic as poem and epic0020as picture? Can epic texts ever be turned into images? And how, if so, can viewers hope to recognise the epic within a picture, or indeed the picture within an epic? As the preceding chapters have demonstrated, these are not just our questions, derived from a (post-)post-structuralist penchant for ‘intermediality’ and ‘iconotexts’. Rather, ancient critics themselves pondered related themes, responding in all manner of creative and critical ways. To grasp the point, one need only think of the Elder Philostratus’ Imagines (composed in the early third century CE). In the opening line of the opening description of Philostratus’ purported gallery, the speaker purports to address a painting drawn from epic: ‘have you noticed’, asks the speaker, ‘that the things before you are from Homer?’ (ἔγνως… ταῦτα Ὁμήρου ὄντα…; Imag. 1.1.1). Painting a picture of Scamander that both is and is not derived from the textual fabric of Iliad 21, and tying his own project of verbalised vision to the metaphorical images of Homer, Philostratus has his audience interrogate what epic visions might actually look like, and in the most playful and self-referential of ways: the game lies in seeing-in every sense-which bits of epic description can be pictured, and which bits lie beyond visual perception (as at least spoken or described).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Epic Visions: Visuality in Greek and Latin Epic and its Reception |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Pages | 248-282 |
| Number of pages | 35 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781139600262, 9781107039384 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 |