The Imagery of the Persians

Abstract

‘If, almost a hundred years ago,’ writes the critic Martin Esslin, Walter Pater could sum up the then prevailing trend in his famous epigram, “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”, the dominant tendency of our own age might be described as an aspiration of all the arts to attain the condition of images' Certainly it is true that the study of imagery has been a fashionable method of literary criticism for some time and, employed with the proper blend of caution and imagination, has proved itself of service in the interpretation of a number of poets, most notably perhaps Shakespeare. It has long been recognized that Aeschylus is a poet who often works through ‘key’ or ‘dominant’ images; indeed, I suspect that classical scholarship may take some modest pride in having been the first in this field of study, even if it has yet to reach the dizzy heights (and sometimes the excesses) achieved by the Shakespearians.