Ekphrasis and Modernism: A Study of Two Poems by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams.

Abstract

Ekphrasis is commonly known as the literary description or commentary of a real or imaginary work of art. In this article, ekphrasis and its relation with Peirce’s theory of signs will be considered for the analysis of two poems written by two American Modernist poets, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. The aim of this study is to analyze the role of ekphrasis in a period of acute consciousness of the visual-verbal interrelationship, as well as to extract some conclusions concerning the particular way in which both poems explore such a relation.