This curricular unit explores the specificity of the relationship between literature and the visual arts, both at a creative and at a critical level.
In the first point – On the concept of ekphrasis, we choose the concept of ekphrasis as central aspect of this relationship in the Classic Age, both at a creative level – the shield of Achilles, and at a theoretical level – Plato, Aristotle and Horace, in order to ponder in the importance that a speculative tradtition had in the dialogue between literature and the visual arts, and in the semantic modulations revealed by the concept of ekphrasis, and in the function of enargeia and sapientia .
In the second point - The Museum, we choose the public Museum in order to understand its influence in the Romantic poets in allowing an involvement with aesthetic alterities and a development of specific reflexive and speculative practices, and idiosyncratic discourses.
In the third point – Meta-discourses, we choose the central aspects of this relationship having in mind the dialogue that both literary and artistic creators enhanced among them and with this tradition – creative heritages, semantic modulations; the critical and speculative approaches they developed – critical essays; and, eventually, the dialogue between literary texts and non-figurative painting - The word beyond the figurative.