The Akathistos Aniconically : Meditations on Unsettled Seeing
As poetry the Akathistos has spurred a whole strain of iconography. The song, however, heaps image upon image, creating a shaky landscape, one which yields an ecstatic kind of seeing. With a form that frequently approximates sound poetry, it complicates a stable gaze.The icons usually feature 24 narrative scenes neatly representing the 24 stanzas of the hymn. While much kontakion hymnography has a