Art in Contemporary Anglo-American Fiction: The Ekphrastic Novel
Publisher DOI
Abstract
This book addresses the recent surge of Anglo-American novels about visual art since the 2010s and interprets it as a coming of age of an old literary subgenre, which is here termed the ‘ekphrastic novel’. These novels are characterized by their systematic use of ekphrases— verbal responses to images that creatively and critically negotiate the intertwined aesthetics of literature and visual art. By representing paintings, photographs, and art installations with words, ekphrastic novels such as Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life position themselves as both practitioners and critics of contemporary image-making. This book focuses on four key aspects—value, form, affect, and scale—to explore the critical questions posed by contemporary ekphrastic novels: who assigns cultural value today, and at what cost? Which social, political, historical, and ethical dimensions are obscured by aesthetic forms? What ambiguous affects do images provoke, and how do they reinforce or challenge existing value systems? How does narrative scale expose injustices at the intersection of life and art? And what insights do ekphrastic novels offer into contemporary reading habits and strategies more broadly? By tracing a literary tradition from nineteenth-century to contemporary fiction and offering detailed close readings of acclaimed ekphrastic novels, this book offers a compelling exploration of one of the most dynamic literary subgenres of our time.
Date Issued
2025
Publication Type
Book
Subjects
contemporary Anglo-American fiction
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ekphrastic novel
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value
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form
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affect
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scale
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museum
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canon
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digital age
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visual culture
Language(s)
en
Publisher
Oxford University Press (United Kingdom)
Access(Rights)
metadata.only