Abstrakt
The paper focused on art and ekphrasis in the works of the British author Vernon Lee (pseudonym of Violet Paget, 1856–1935). A respected authority on art and music in her time, Paget spent most of her life in Italy where she moved in artistic circles, and artworks and music often feature in her supernatural tales, which occupy a significant place in the history of British ghost story and weird fiction.
This talk commented on different uses of art and ekphrasis in several short stories and novellas, including “Amour dure”, “Dionea”, “A Wicked Voice”, “Oke of Okehurst”, and “Marsyas in Flanders”, and explored how Paget works with paintings, statues, and music, real and fictional, in her smart and disconcerting accounts of hauntings, enchantments, and possessions. It also touched on other examples of the use of artworks in British ghost stories and weird fiction, and comment on the effect of employing art in literature of the supernatural.
