David Kennedy was Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of HullRichard Meek is Lecturer in English at the University of Hull

• Introduction: from paragone to encounter – David Kennedy and Richard MeekPart I: Early modern encounters1 ‘Lamentable objects’: ekphrasis and historical materiality in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece – Rachel Eisendrath2 ‘Fabulously counterfeit’: ekphrastic encounters in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy – Richard Meek3 ‘Art indeed is long, but life is short’: ekphrasis and mortality in Andrew Marvell – Keith McDonald4 ‘The Painter has made a finer Story than the Poet’: Jonathan Richardson’s ekphrastic ‘Dissertation’ on Poussin’s Tancred and Erminia – Jason LawrencePart II: Nineteenth-century encounters5 Blind spots of narration? Ekphrasis and Laocoön digressions in the novel – Catriona MacLeod6 The face of Beatrice Cenci – Stephen Cheeke7 Mirroring naturalism in word and image: a critical exchange between Emile Zola and Edouard Manet – Lauren S. Weingarden8 Close encounters of the third kind: Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’ – Jane ThomasPart III: Modern and postmodern encounters9 An artist of the bizarre: Stanley Spencer’s ‘ordinary’ ekphrases – Liliane Louvel10 The graphics of ekphrastic writing: Raymond Pettibon’s drawing-writing – Tilo Reifenstein11 Ekphrasis/exscription: Jean-Luc Nancy on thinking and touching art – Johanna Malt12 On gazers’ encounters with visual art: ekphrasis, readers, ‘iconotexts’ – Claus ClüverAfterword – James A. W. HeffernanIndex

‘… this book… provides a bracingly intelligent account of a much-debated writerly trope.’Lynsey McCulloch, Coventry University, The Review of English Studies, New Series, 1–2