EKPHRASTIC ENCOUNTERS AND CONTEMPORARY FICTION

The chapter begins with a critical examination of the varied ways-and critical disagreements-that have been generated over the term ekphrasis from the late twentieth to the early twenty-first century, with an emphasis on how contemporary fiction has shaped a more porous interpretation of the critical concept. Focusing on the work of contemporary fiction writers like Han Kang, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, Ali Smith, and John Banville, among others, the chapter explains how these novels innovatively absorb visual encounters to such a degree that the narrative logic of their novels become completely predicated on the presence of visual images, exemplifying deep structural integration between word and image. Such compelling integration of the visual arts into novelistic structure, Murphy argues, invites provocative reflections on the meaning of contemporary ekphrasis and re-conceptions of the very limits of what constitutes art.