Αὐδὴ τεχνήεσσα λίθου: intermedialità e intervisualità nell’epigramma greco

This paper analyses the multidirectional interaction between text and image in Greek epigram of the Hellenistic and Roman Era, and describes it through the categories of ‘intermediality’ and ‘intervisuality’, which do not always appear clearly distinguished in scholarly use. I will thus try to better define them in their application to epigram. In particular, I will label ‘intermediality’ any expression of a message through the simultaneous use of two different media (visual and textual), and thus the combination of two different semiotic systems (Medienkombination), one of which (the text) explicitly mentions the other (the monument). The concept of intervisuality, on the contrary, will be used for any implicit allusion to an image on the part of the text, working as an equivalent of the intertextual allusion, but specifically involving the interaction image-text. While intermediality thus describes a relationship based on the actual interaction between a textual and a visual medium (relationship epigraph-monument), I propose to use the category of intervisuality in order to define a kind of interaction that appeals to the visual memory of the audience, without explicitly mentioning any actual object.