VISUAL NARRATIVES: EKPHRASIS AND ART IN MODERNIST ENGLISH POETRY

Abstract

This paper explores the role of ekphrasis—the literary description of visual art—in shaping the aesthetic and thematic fabric of modernist English poetry. Modernist poets such as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound frequently employed ekphrastic strategies to interrogate the nature of representation, the fragmentation of experience, and the tension between word and image. In doing so, they challenged traditional mimetic functions of both poetry and visual art, constructing instead a dynamic intermedial dialogue. Through close readings of key poems, this study reveals how visual narratives become embedded in poetic form, serving as a site for modernist experimentation with temporality, perception, and subjectivity. The fusion of visual and verbal modes not only underscores the poets' responses to modernity but also reflects the broader cultural shifts toward abstraction, ambiguity, and the redefinition of artistic boundaries in the early 20th century.