This hypothesis will be elucidated by investigating a case-study: the ekphrasis of the famous German author Heinrich von Kleist, who wrote about the revolutionary painting The Monk at the Sea by Caspar David Friedrich. We argue that in modern times, starting with Romantics, this process comes to its extreme expression and ekphrasis becomes a meta-critical commentary about the act of imagining, since it induces the reader to complete the description by simulating a personal experience triggered by the rhetoric “vivideness” of ekphrasis. Therefore, the cognitive process is overwhelming for the reader/listener, who is driven to overcome his/her own cognitive limitations thanks to processes of the imagination that “fills in the gaps” between the known and unknown. This creates an “in-between” space where the known meets the unknown. The description of actions solicits more powerfully the embodied simulation of the reader/listener. The intertwining of codes determines also a substitution of the description by actions, as described by ancient rhetoricians. the fact that the fictional visible qualities of the described artwork triggers the process of visualization because the reader/listener is put in the need of “creating” images on his own by activating the imagination following the path traced by the text. This because the double nature of the inputs triggers more powerfully the embodied simulation.Įkphrasis relies on what we define a “paradoxical nature”, i.e. We argue in this study that this rhetorical figure, which has been object of many disputes and critical claims over the times, is a powerful tool in order to stimulate a particularly intense activation of the reader/listener’s emotions and imagination.
Ekphrasis is a rhetorical figure of speech based on the intertwining of visual and verbal features, involving the processes of both reading and priming a visual image or a related action.
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