Functional Specificity of Ekphrasis in R. D. Harris's Novel “Lustrum”
The article is devoted to analysing functional specificity of the nature of sculptural ekphrasis in R. D. Harris's novel “Lustrum”, whose object was the Venus de Milo's statue. Scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that there are no studies related to analysing the functional nature of ekphrasis in R. D. Harris's creative work both in the western and Russian literary criticism. In this respect, the aim of the study is to uncover the role played by the stylistic devices used by the author in the chosen ekphrastic description and determined in the course of the analysis. The attained results have shown that the statuary image of the Venice de Milo, adding to the historical portrait of Aurelia Cotta, reveals behavioural particularities of a woman's image in the context of postmodernist prose poetics.