Ecstasis of Ekphrasis: Dialectically (De)framing Self in John Banville’s The Book of Evidence

Abstract

John Banville's "The Book of Evidence" posits a tension between the narrator’s conception of language as that which is incapable of fully conveying the "evidence" of the text and his desire to acquire a unity of subjectivity and objectivity through a means outside of the insufficient signification system of language. Relinquishing his desire to stabilize his presence through painting signifiers that parallel the linguistic fallacy of unity, the narrator turns towards windows as a subliminal space neither inside nor outside edifice, a structure that attempts to demarcate a binary between the “natural” exterior world and the “artificial” interior realm of humanity.