On The Ekphrasis Of John Banville’s Frames Trilogy

John Banville is an award-winning contemporary Irish writer whose novels are always about visual art.As an important work of Banville’s mid-period novels,the frames trilogy presents lots of visual art elements in plot,image and language.This thesis mainly studies Banville’s frames trilogy(The Book of Evidence,Ghost and Athena)from the view of ekphrasis.The introduction mainly introduces the research status of Banville’s frames trilogy at home and abroad,and explains the main research ideas and methods.The main part of this thesis can be divided into four parts.The first part is the logical starting point of the whole thesis.This part firstly sorts out the development of the theory of ekphrasis,analyzes the function of it,and on this basis,probes into the formation reasons of Banville’s ekphrasis practice.The second part focuses on the mapping relationship between life and painting reflected by the characteristics of visual representation in the frames trilogy.From this point of view,it focuses on the innovation of the novel form in the works and how the form represents the splitting state of human subject under the complex political and religious background in Ireland.The third part focuses on exploring the presentation of the ethical concern of ekphrasis in the frames trilogy,namely,who is watching and how to watch,what is the result of watching,and how artists should do to art.This part mainly put the gaze theory into discussion,finds that there are two gaze modes in the novel:self-examination and peer of the other.Therefore we can find out that the allocation of gender power is the direct reflection of the ethical concern in the novel,that is to say,there is a confrontation between male gaze and female gaze.The fourth part focuses on the imagination space and memory space shaped by painting as narrative clue in the frames trilogy.The work attempts to re-recognize the history of Ireland in the past 30 years by means of imagination and creation,to find the way of redemption from the two dimensions of art and life,and to reconstruct the Irish society through the power of imagination,which reflects the life thinking and historical care contained in Banville’s works.The conclusion is a summary of the thesis,which briefly states the main pointsof this paper,and then points out the significance of the ekphrasis in the frames trilogy for the innovation of the novel form,and the value of the deep concern for the problems faced by Irish or even the whole human beings.