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

Year 2013, Volume: 10 Issue: 2, 163 - 169, 02.11.2013

Özlem Uzundemir

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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