"Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes provides a range of possibilities to those who wish to study the delicate and suggestive connections between the verbal and the visual during the Spanish Golden Age. Writing, during the early modern period, repeatedly captured the reader's imagination through a strongly visual component. Thus this book focuses on one such visual device - ekphrasis. This ancient technique has its locus classicus in Homer's Iliad and becomes prominent in the Middle Ages through the diffusion of Virgil's Aeneid. Renaissance Italian writers such as Dante, Ariosto, and Boiardo have emulated this classical technique and understood its range and complexities." "This collection of essays seeks to open up this complex interdisciplinary field of study by including essays on many aspects of visual writing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain."--Jacket.