Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Ekphrasis of Hair

Abstract

We are accustomed to thinking of works of ekphrasis as using language to prod a visual representation of a static moment into narrative motion. Rightly, then, criticism of ekphrastic poetry tends to focus on visuality and the gaze. But what exactly does it mean for an object to be representational? This article traces the way that not only traditional art objects, but also hair – in locks, on the head, and (occasionally) incorporated into hair jewelry or collages – functioned representationally during the Romantic period. But while an art object typically represents a static moment perceived visually, a moment that can be prompted into narrative motion through ekphrasis, hair, as we will see, typically represents the social existence of a human being made tangible, with complex implications for the continuity of a self that progresses in time as its representation remains changeless. By examining both sight and hair in “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci” and The Cenci, this article shows how Shelley develops an ekphrastic trajectory that moves not just from sight to speech, but from the politics of witness to the politics of social implication.

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