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 I first drafted the ideas developed in this book as a resident fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UC Irvine) in 1991. For their comments and criticism, I am especially grateful to the other fellows: Marian Hobson, Ludwig Pfeiffer, Walter Pape, Elinor Shaffer, and Barbara Stafford. Throughout our collaborative residency, Murray Krieger was always available to help me answer questions about illusion and self-reflexivity and, more importantly, to help me formulate those questions. My analysis of the self-reflexivity of ekphrasis was further developed in discussions with Grant Scott and James Heffernan, and I thank Peter Wagner for inviting me to present an early exposition of that argument at his symposium “Ekphrasis and Intermediality ” at Eichstätt, Germany, in May 1993. Responding graciously to frantic long-distance telephone calls begging his help, John Mahoney shared valuable insights drawn from his thorough command of the romantic debate over mimesis. Early versions of Chapters 2, 4, and 5 appeared in John Beer’s Questioning Romanticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Reflecting Senses: Perception and Appearance in Literature,Culture,and the Arts, whichWalter Pape and I edited (Berlin and NewYork: De Gruyter, 1995); and Peter Wagner’s Icons— Texts—Iconotexts.Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality (Berlin and NewYork: De Gruyter, 1996). I am grateful for permission to use these materials. Because this book has been long in development, I owe a grand debt of appreciation to the University of California and to several constituencies of the Research Committee of the UCLA Academic Senate for their willingness to fund this project year after year. When the work was finally ready for publication at Penn State, I was surprised by the largesse of an anonymous member of the UCLA Alumni Association, who provided generous support. My work arrived at Penn State at a time when there was a momentous changingof -the-guard: Philip Winsor, the senior editor who had seen two of my previous books through the press, pledged his support on this one as well, and he was able to keep that pledge before his retirement in September 1998. Sanford Thatcher, director, and Shannon Pennefeather, editorial assistant, have made the transition trouble-free. I thank them for maintaining the high standards and painstaking care that makes my work far better in print than when it leaves my computer.                 ...

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