Challenges to Ekphrastic Poetry: Carol Ann Duffy’s “Standing Female Nude”

Abstract

Bir görsel sanat yapıtını betimleyen şiirler, yazınsal metinler ve görsel sanatlar arasındaki farkların ortaya çıkmasını sağlarlar. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’in Laocoön adlı kitabında sözünü ettiği gibi sanat yapıtı sessiz ve durağan olmasına karşın, yazınsal metin söze ve harekete dayanır. W. J. T. Mitchell Picture Theory adlı kitabında söz ve imge arasındaki böylesi ikili karşıtlığı cinsiyet rollerini de içerecek şekilde genişletir. İmge dişil, söz ise eril olarak ele alınır. Dişil imge bakılan nesne olmasına karşın, erkek yazar/sanatçı özne ve bakan konumundadır. Carol Ann Duffy “Standing Female Nude” adlı şiirinde, bu tür ikili karşıtlıkları sorgulayabilmek için erkek sanatçı yerine kadın modele söz hakkı verir ve bakma edimini de model üstlenir. Böylece, Duffy anlatıcının ister sanat yapıtı sahibi, ister sanatçının kendisi, isterse de yapıta bakan bir erkek olduğu resimbetimsel şiir geleneğini reddederek sanatçı ve modeli arasındaki güç ilişkisini sorgular.

Keywords

• Carol Ann Duffy,resimbetim,“Standing Female Nude”,feminizm,yap›bozumculuk

Challenges to Ekphrastic Poetry: Carol Ann Duffy’s “Standing Female Nude”

Abstract

Ekphrasis rests on the paragone between the sister arts, namely verbal and visual arts, the word and the image. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his Laocoön claims that the image is silent and fixed while the literary work is based on voice and action. W. J. T. Mitchell in his Picture Theory enlarges this binary opposition between the word and image in terms of gender roles: the female image versus the male word. The female image is objectified and gazed, while the male author/artist is the subject and the gazer. The poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Standing Female Nude” challenges such binary oppositions by giving voice not to the male artist but to his female model, and by attributing the role of gazing to her. Hence, the aim of this article is to display how Duffy deconstructs the ekphrastic tradition in her poem in order to subvert the domineering relationship between the artist and his model. 

Keywords

• Carol Ann Duffy,ekphrastic poetry,“Standing Female Nude,” feminism,deconstruction

References

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