Synesthesia in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ekphrasis: From Audible Paintings to Tangible Ideas

Marie-Odile Bernez, Fiona McMahon, Christelle Serée-Chaussinand, Maurice Géracht, Brittain Smith (eds.)International audienceThe study of Percy Bysshe Shelley's ekphrases of paintings shows that synesthesia helps him cope with the difference of media, painting, colours and canvas on the one hand, and letters, sounds and paper on the other. Synesthesia must be taken here in the broadest sense of the term, not only meaning inter-sense analogy and combinations, but also transfers between the tangible world of senses, especially touch, and the more intangible plane of emotions and ideas. The poet not only seeks to transfer a visual work of art into literature but also to make his ideas and emotions visible and palpable in the description of a painting. Synesthesia thus becomesas important an ekphrastic tool as ekphrastic prosopopeia or ventriloquism