The Male Gaze versus Female Self-Determination in Ekphrastic Poetry

Essay from the year 2015 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Genres, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (Institut für englische Philologie), course: Ekphrasis: Theory and Practice, language: English, abstract: This essay examines the confrontation of the male gaze with female self-determination in ekphrastic poetry, using the poem Standing Female Nude by Carol Ann Duffy as an example. The main aim of the essay is to show how ekphrasis and its specific features serve as a space in which gender conflicts are debated in the realm of aesthetics and how the emergence of a 'distinctive female ekphrastic mode' (Kennedy 2012: 90) led to a shift from masculine dominance towards female power in the genre. In a first step, a definition of ekphrasis will be given and we will argue the case for why certain characteristics make ekphrasis particularly suitable for exhibiting the male gaze. Subsequently, in a second step, we will demonstrate to what extent female writers have modified the conventions of ekphrasis and challenged its traditional gender relations to suit their own need for self-determination. Carol Ann Duffy's poem Standing Female Nude (1985) will serve as an example for feminist ekphrasis.