“« On croirait qu’elle va parler » est le lieu commun?” Ambiguous relations between prosopopoeia and ekphrasis

Abstract

It stands to reason that ekphrasis cannot be limited to the detailed but plain description of the artifact, for it often concerns what is not there in the painting as well. Authors of the ekphrases sometimes “animate” or “revive” a work of art, which manifests itself in narrativization of painted scenes. The process is also frequently supplemented by its continuation or backstory and fictitious utterances of figures depicted in the painting. The paper discusses a specific literary form of that kind of “animation”, that is texts in which characters that can be seen in a painting (or paintings itself) receive the voice through the prosopopoeia and expose their selfawareness of “artificiality”. The precise subject of this study is P. Assouline’s novel Le Portrait which is narrated by baroness Betty de Rothschild, the figure from the J.A.D. Ingres’ painting. In this article, I am focusing on the mode and meaning of prosopopoeia in Assouline’s novel. I am also trying to examine whether every text that is based on the concept of a “speaking” work of art (i.e. in which prosopopoeia is used) can be described as ekphrasis.