Connecting the Visual to the Verbal in the Classroom

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CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 10.01.07

Unit Guide

Writing about the Big Picture: American Ekphrasis

James Foltz

Published September 2010

Tools for this Unit:

Sketching the Big Picture: Some Strategies

The overarching strategy for teaching ekphrasis in this unit is to frequently expose students to ekphrastic works as well as the visual arts. Doing so not only reinforces the skill of analyzing such a literary approach, but also reinforces that literature and the other branches of the arts have an intimate relationship with one another. In terms of strategies used in lessons, they are as follows:

To view, discuss, and write on artwork found in actual ekphrasis
To present or share original artwork, ekphrastic pieces, and short academic writing based on ekphrasis
To compare and contrast ekphrasis created by different writers
To create pictures and diagrams derived from notional ekphrasis
To create and write explanations for original ekphrastic pieces, including poetry, prose, and those related to emblems

Comments:

James Anthony Foltz

September 23, 2010 at 11:48 pm

Elizabeth Pain Gravestone Photo Credit:

Regrettably, Sean P. Aune - who so graciously gave permission to use his work - was not given a photo credit for the Elizabeth Pain gravestone. My sincerest apologies for this oversight.

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Teacher Resources

A&A Studios, Inc. "The Museum of Mourning Photography & Memorial practice." http://antviz.tripod.com/mourningphoto (accessed July 31, 2010).

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. 1 ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995.

Maine Historical Society. "Maine Memory Network – Frances Appleton Longfellow by Rowse, 1859." http://www.mainememory.net/bin/Detail?ln=15474 (accessed July 31, 2010).

"Moby Dick's Coin." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick_Coin.

Resheph, Philip. "The Iliad of Homer." http://www.philipresheph.com/demodokos/book1/pic60.htm (accessed July 31, 2010).

Smithsonian National Museum of Amiercan History. "NMAH Mountain of the Holy Cross." http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=259 (accessed July 31, 2010).

Walters Art Museum. "The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (French, 1823–1881)." http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=25737 (accessed July 31, 2010).

Notes

Kane, Bob, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," Detective Comics. May, 1939.

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995).

Cox, James. "Longfellow and His Cross of Snow." JSTOR 75, no. 1 (1960): 97–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/460431?seq=1 (accessed July 10, 2010).

Mcfarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. (New York: Grove Press, 2005).

Ryskamp, Charles. "The New England Sources of The Scarlet Letter." American Literature 31, no. 3 (1959): 257–272.

Shackleton, Robert. The Book of Boston. Philadephia: (The Penn Publishing Company, 1916).

Rozakis, Laurie. "Another Possible Source of Hawthorne's Hester Prynne." American Transcendental Quarterly 59, March (1986): 63–71.

"Scarlet Letter Inspiration," http://www.celebrateboston.com/strange/scarlet–letter.htm (accessed July 10, 2010).

Garrison, Daniel. "Melville's Doubloon and the Shield of Achilles." Nineteenth–Century Fiction 26, no. 2 (1971): 171–184.