ecphrasis ecphrasis
 ek'-fra-sis from Gk. ek, "out" and phrasein, "to speak"

  1. Vivid description; using details to place an object, person, or event before the listeners' eyes (=hypotyposis or evidentia). See also enargia.
  2. The Greek term for the progymnasmata exercise, description.
  3. Ecphrasis has another more restricted definition: the literary description of a work of art. Philostratus Lemnius helped to fix this more restricted sense of this term in the second century in his Imagines.
 
Related Figures
 

See Also
 

 
  Sources: Aphthonius 12, Nicolaus 491-93


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Gideon O. Burton, Brigham Young University
Please cite "Silva Rhetoricae" (rhetoric.byu.edu)

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