Ekphrasis and the stage: theatricality and reception

Abstract

One of the characteristics of ekphrasis, and the related concept of enargeia, as defined in ancient theory is its theatrical nature. The analogy with the stage is present in the stated aim of ekphrasis to “turn listeners into spectators” and, moreover, its use is associated with contexts in which the speaker is conceived as engaging in a live performance in the presence of an audience. This paper considers the implications of ekphrasis as performance for our reading of a range of texts and will pay particular attention to the use of vivid language in classical tragedy, where the images evoked by the messenger speech exist alongside the actual sights of the stage. That readers in later centuries were aware of this effect and its paradoxes is suggested by the presence among the Imagines of Philostratus of several scenes inspired by tragic messenger speeches presented as if they were the subjects of paintings. Two forms of reception are therefore considered: the reception of plays by their original Athenian audiences and the reception of the texts of those same plays by readers at later periods of antiquity.