Ekphrasis and Its Functioning in the Poetics of Penelope Lively’s Novel The Photograph

• Main Authors: Olga Grigorievna Sidorova, Tatiana Anatolievna Poluektova
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural Federal University Press 2019-12-01
• Series: Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки
• Subjects: пенелопа лайвли; «фотография»; ролан барт; фотография; фотографический экфрасис; фототекстуальность; жанр; английская литература; память; воспоминание.
• Online Access: https://journals.urfu.ru/index.php/Izvestia2/article/view/4303

In this article, referring to British writer Penelope Lively’s novel The Photograph (2003) the authors reveal the phenomenon of ekphrasis, both photographic and picturesque, also describing its specific features. Interrelations between the text of fiction and the photograph are referred to as photographic ekphrasis and phototextuality, the terms being closely synonymic. The novel contains several descriptions of photographic images and portrait, which were found by one of the main characters. Their description is given through the perception of the lead characters. The photograph, which is provided with a certain microstory, has its own narrative that is supported by the characters’ points of view. Thus, they seek to solve both the direct (hidden in the picture) and the indirect (off-screen) secrets of the text. The characters’ memories, which seemed to be safe and stable, turn out to be relative and unreliable. As a result, polyphony makes the objective knowledge of the past highly questionable and almost impossible. Thanks to the photograph that presents the memory modus, the characters are able to look differently at the “Other”, to acquire new identities and new meaning of life. Despite the fact that the novel presents a photographic and picturesque ekphrasis, the first is leading, because the title of the novel, The Photograph, refers the reader to a certain mode of perception. The article proves that the photographic ekphrasis present in the novel makes it possible to define the novel genre. It is stated that The Photograph is a phototextual novel with dominating psychological and detective elements. In Lively’s novel, ekphrasis performs such functions as: plot-forming, compositional, psychological, characterological, and genre-forming. The analysed novel, on the one hand, is an individual author’s artistic representation of the photographic, on the other — it reflects general trends of modern prose with its increased interest in “visual turn” that takes place in the Humanities in the second half of the twentieth century.