A Way of Seeing: Aesthetics of Trompe-l’œil in Michael Ondaatje’s Novels

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_29How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Michael Ondaatje; trompe-l’œil; intermediality; ways of seeing

Abstract

Michael Ondaatje’s novels highlight the potency of visuality and are imbued with rich representations of the aesthetics of fine arts, particularly marked with allusions to the aesthetics of trompe-l’œil paintings in titling, characterization, plot framing, depiction of scenes, and the historical themes. Basicly, Ondaatje’s works exhibit three essential traits of the trompe-l’œil paintings: the effect of illusion, the effect of presence, and the effect of seduction. Ondaatje’s incorporation of the elements of trompe-l’œil in literary creation is not merely his intended engagement to intermedial practice, but the representation of his unique perspective on history or his “ways of seeing” the past.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jinlei Huang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/22
TI  - A Way of Seeing: Aesthetics of Trompe-l’œil in Michael Ondaatje’s Novels
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 258
EP  - 270
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_29
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_29
ID  - Huang2025
ER  -