The transformation of imagery through postcolonial Ekphrastic blindness as a reflection of the westernization of poetry in Derek Walcott`s work.

1. “EKPHRASIS THROUGH OTHERNESS:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF IMAGERY IN DEREK WALCOTT’S POETRY”
Leandro Zago

2. • Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms:
imagery, a rather vague critical term covering those uses of
language in a literary work that evoke sense‐ impressions by literal
or figurative reference to perceptible or ‘concrete’ objects, scenes,
actions, or states, as distinct from the language of abstract
argument or exposition. The imagery of a literary work thus
comprises the set of images that it uses; these need not be mental
‘pictures’, but may appeal to senses other than sight. The term has
often been applied particularly to the figurative language used in a
work, especially to its metaphors and similes. Images suggesting
further meanings and associations in ways that go beyond the fairly
simple identifications of metaphor and simile are often called
symbols. The critical emphasis on imagery in the mid‐ 20th
century, both in New Criticism and in some influential studies of
Shakespeare, tended to glorify the supposed concreteness of
literary works by ignoring matters of structure, convention, and
abstract argument: thus Shakespeare's plays were read as clusters
or patterns of ‘thematic imagery’ according to the predominance of
particular kinds of image (of animals, of disease, etc.), without
reference to the action or to the dramatic meaning of characters'
speeches. See also motif.

4. Imagery
Imagery in postcolonial* poetry reading is usually aligned through
the squint of cultural identity.
*Postcolonial studies in this investigation will be
restricted to the concept of otherness and the Caribbean culture.

5. Identifiable aspects of cultural identity, e.g., resembling physiological
and moral generalizations of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, class,
and nationality, may limit/restrain poetic imagery response construction
in postcolonial poetry within the social realm only.
Pablo Picasso. Girl Before a Mirror. 1932. Oil
on canvas. The Museum of Modern Arts, New
York, NY, USA.

7. Holub (1984) pointed out: “The literary work is neither completely text
nor completely the subjectivity of the reader, but a combination or merger
of the two” (84).
The overall context of the proposed investigation
concerns ekphrasis, and otherness.

8. Definition
Ekphrasis is a verbal representation of a visual
representation through language of sense
experience.
Otherness is a culturist trap.

9. http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/0415270618/pdf/theme2.pdf

10. The Specific Context
The specific context of this investigation is
words generating images in Walcott’s
collection of poems White Egrets.

11. “Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire” (White Egrets 47).

12. Review of Literature
Mitchell’s (1990) Iconology: Image, text, ideology; Ekphrasis
and the Other, Chicago U. P.
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (2000), Post-
Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts;
Hall, S. (1996) Who Needs Identity. Questions of Cultural
Identity. Eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. London:
SAGE.
• ___. (1989). Ethnicity: Identity and Difference. Radical
America.
Cheeken, Stephen. Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of
Ekphrasis. Manchester U.P.; 1st edition (January 6, 2009);

13. Objectives
The overall objective of this investigation is an
ekphrastic literary analysis of the interrelation
between imagery and words in poetry.
The specific objective is to investigate
imagination (the manifestation of otherness
in reading and understanding) tuning/aligning
imagery in Walcott’s White Egrets.

14. Hypothesis
• The hypothesis is that the images of the white
egrets, of Saint Lucia, and of Walcott himself
seem to be portrayed as “pieces of a puzzle”
put together as one, in that the concepts of
imagery, ekphrasis, and otherness converge
therein. Nevertheless, this apparent
connection brought into oneness is also
multiplicity through which identities may
manifest in “each piece”.

15. “Let the torn poems sail from you like a
flock/of white egrets in a long last sigh of
relief/watch these egrets/stalk the lawn in a
dishevelled troop, white banners/forlornly
trailing their flags; they are the bleached
regrets/of an old man's memoirs, their
unwritten stanzas./ Pages gusting like wings
on the lawn, wide open secrets" (65).

17. Significance of the Research
• The scientific significance of this research lies on
the fact that reader’s response and visuality
building imagery seem to be treated separately in
the literary field.
• MA research at PGI contemplating Ekphrasis and
Walcott.
• Personal.

18. PROCEDURES
• This is a theoretical research;
• Identification and definition the main
hypothetical aspects which encompass this
research;
• Annotated reading of the selected poems in
the search of images and motifs.

19. PROBABLE CONTENTS
• Introduction;
• Chapter 2- “For an ekphrastic
poetry”;
• Chapter 3: “The postcolonial
camera: otherized distorted lens”;
• Conclusion.

20. REFERENCES
• Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin. (2000). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London and New York:
Routledge.
• Baer, William. Conversations with Derek Walcott. University Press of Mississipi, 1996. USA.
• Bosi, A. (1977). O ser e o tempo da poesia. São Paulo. Cultrix: Ed. Da Universidade de São Paulo.
• Cheeken, Stephen. Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis. Manchester U.P.; 1st edition (January 6,
2009).
• Hall, S. (1996) Who Needs Identity. Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay.
London: SAGE.
• ___. (1989). Ethnicity: Identity and Difference. Radical America: 23.4: 9-20.
• Heffernan, James A. W. (2006). Cultivating picturacy: visual art and verbal interventions. Waco, Texas:
Baylor University Press.
• Heffernan, James A. W. (1993). Museum of words: the poetics of ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. London:
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd.
• Hollander, J. (1981). Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse. New York: Yale University Press.
• Holub, Robert C. (1984) Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Methuen.
• Kyle, K. (2009). Ezra Pound And The Rhetoric Of Science, 1901–1922. Howey University College London.
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in European
Studies, University College London.
• Loizeaux, Elizabeth B. (2008). Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts. Cambridge: University Press.
• Meléndez, M. (2002). Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture
and Experience. (Co-editor). Bucknell: University Press.
• Mitchell, W. J. T. (1990). Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Univ. Of Chicago Press.
• Mitchell, W.J.T. (1994). Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Univ. Of Chicago
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• Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Ekphrasis and the Other, from PICTURE THEORY. The University of Chicago
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• Paz, Octavio. (2003). El Arco y La Lira. Fondo de Cultura Económica. México: D.F.
• Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Library. London: University College.
• Walcott, Derek. (2010). White Egrets. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

21. THANK YOU!