Silke Horstkotte is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Warwick (UK). She has published widely on twentieth century and contemporary German literature, literature and visual culture, photography in fiction, and narratology. Current research projects investigate focalization in comics and graphic novels, and the literary engagement with religion in a postsecular present.
Classical ekphrasis is the literary form most closely associated with a specifically literary vis... more Classical ekphrasis is the literary form most closely associated with a specifically literary visuality. Understood as a special poetic genre by some critics, and a general principle of literature by others, this article argues that ekphrasis is most productively regarded as a mode of detailed and self-reflective engagement with a visual artefact. This can be a real artefact that actually exists outside the literary text, or a 'notional' artefact whose existence is solely based on the ekphrasis. Although the distinction between 'actual' and 'notional' ekphrasis matters to some readers, it has not had much of an impact on the mode itself; all ekphrases before the Renaissance were notional ekphrases. In both actual and notional ekphrases, the verbal presentation of a visual artefact directs attention to representation itself, to the differences between verbal and visual representation , to the powers and demands that each imposes on the recipient, and to vis-uality more generally. Because of their inherent self-reflexivity, texts in the ekphrastic tradition lend themselves to a focused enquiry into what it is like when literature engages in making us see something. Through detailed analyses of three such reflective or 'metaphenomenological' texts – one a classical ekphrasis (Keats' " Ode on a Grecian Urn "), the other two more extended reflections on vision and ekphrasis (Pere Gimferrer's " The Man in the Turban " and Durs Grünbein's Vom Schnee) – this chapter makes three points about literary visualisation: firstly, that vivid description in ekphrasis often does not lead to lively visualisations but is difficult , even impossible at times, to visualise (and is never purely visual to begin with); secondly, that visualisation is never, in any case, brought up in isolation by literary texts but is always bound up in specific acts of looking that are tied to an instance of the text, the focaliser; and thirdly, that it is culturally contingent, and based on historical assumptions about vision and visuality.
The Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was a golden age of photography. Within just over a decade, Germa... more The Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was a golden age of photography. Within just over a decade, Germany and its capital Berlin became a center of inter- national modernism; photography, evolving in close dialogue with other art forms, was at the forefront of artistic innovation. Weimar photographers broke away from a pictorialist emulation of painting, challenging the very definition of (art) photography in the process. Technology was key in this process; as cameras became lighter, lenses faster, and film stock more light sensitive, this changed how, and by whom, photographs were produced and the ways and contexts in which they were viewed.
Recollective Processes and the Topography of Forgetting in WG Sebald's Austerlitz Employin... more Recollective Processes and the Topography of Forgetting in WG Sebald's Austerlitz Employing recent conceptualizations of cultural memory (Assmann, Huyssen, Crewe), the article examines the poetics of remembering and forgetting in WG Sebald's novel Austerlitz (2001). ...
Führt Wilhelms Weg zum Theater einerseits über die Literarisierung der rätselhaften Mignon, so ma... more Führt Wilhelms Weg zum Theater einerseits über die Literarisierung der rätselhaften Mignon, so macht deren androgynes Zwitterwesen, das die hermeneutische Ausdeutung der Figur erheblich erschwert, Wilhelms Künstlertum andererseits zunehmend problematisch. ...
The Double Dynamics of Focalization in WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn Silke Horstkotte (Lei... more The Double Dynamics of Focalization in WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn Silke Horstkotte (Leipzig) It is frequently observed that the twentieth century has been a century of images. 1 The omnipresence of images in newspapers and magazines, advertisements, film, and video, ...
Classical ekphrasis is the literary form most closely associated with a specifically literary vis... more Classical ekphrasis is the literary form most closely associated with a specifically literary visuality. Understood as a special poetic genre by some critics, and a general principle of literature by others, this article argues that ekphrasis is most productively regarded as a mode of detailed and self-reflective engagement with a visual artefact. This can be a real artefact that actually exists outside the literary text, or a 'notional' artefact whose existence is solely based on the ekphrasis. Although the distinction between 'actual' and 'notional' ekphrasis matters to some readers, it has not had much of an impact on the mode itself; all ekphrases before the Renaissance were notional ekphrases. In both actual and notional ekphrases, the verbal presentation of a visual artefact directs attention to representation itself, to the differences between verbal and visual representation , to the powers and demands that each imposes on the recipient, and to vis-uality more generally. Because of their inherent self-reflexivity, texts in the ekphrastic tradition lend themselves to a focused enquiry into what it is like when literature engages in making us see something. Through detailed analyses of three such reflective or 'metaphenomenological' texts – one a classical ekphrasis (Keats' " Ode on a Grecian Urn "), the other two more extended reflections on vision and ekphrasis (Pere Gimferrer's " The Man in the Turban " and Durs Grünbein's Vom Schnee) – this chapter makes three points about literary visualisation: firstly, that vivid description in ekphrasis often does not lead to lively visualisations but is difficult , even impossible at times, to visualise (and is never purely visual to begin with); secondly, that visualisation is never, in any case, brought up in isolation by literary texts but is always bound up in specific acts of looking that are tied to an instance of the text, the focaliser; and thirdly, that it is culturally contingent, and based on historical assumptions about vision and visuality.
The Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was a golden age of photography. Within just over a decade, Germa... more The Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was a golden age of photography. Within just over a decade, Germany and its capital Berlin became a center of inter- national modernism; photography, evolving in close dialogue with other art forms, was at the forefront of artistic innovation. Weimar photographers broke away from a pictorialist emulation of painting, challenging the very definition of (art) photography in the process. Technology was key in this process; as cameras became lighter, lenses faster, and film stock more light sensitive, this changed how, and by whom, photographs were produced and the ways and contexts in which they were viewed.
Recollective Processes and the Topography of Forgetting in WG Sebald's Austerlitz Employin... more Recollective Processes and the Topography of Forgetting in WG Sebald's Austerlitz Employing recent conceptualizations of cultural memory (Assmann, Huyssen, Crewe), the article examines the poetics of remembering and forgetting in WG Sebald's novel Austerlitz (2001). ...
Führt Wilhelms Weg zum Theater einerseits über die Literarisierung der rätselhaften Mignon, so ma... more Führt Wilhelms Weg zum Theater einerseits über die Literarisierung der rätselhaften Mignon, so macht deren androgynes Zwitterwesen, das die hermeneutische Ausdeutung der Figur erheblich erschwert, Wilhelms Künstlertum andererseits zunehmend problematisch. ...
The Double Dynamics of Focalization in WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn Silke Horstkotte (Lei... more The Double Dynamics of Focalization in WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn Silke Horstkotte (Leipzig) It is frequently observed that the twentieth century has been a century of images. 1 The omnipresence of images in newspapers and magazines, advertisements, film, and video, ...
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