Poetics of the Iconotext

Poetics of the Iconotext makes available for the first time in English the theories of the respected French text/image specialist, Professor Liliane Louvel. A consolidation of the most significant theoretical materials of Louvel’s two acclaimed books, L’Oeil du Texte: Texte et image dans la littérature anglophone and Texte/Image: Images à lire, textes à voir, this newly conceived work introduces English readers to the most current thinking in French text/image theory and visual studies. Focusing on the full spectrum of text/image relations, from medieval illuminated manuscripts to digital books, Louvel begins by introducing key terms and situating her work in the context of significant debates in text/image studies. Part II introduces Louvel’s s typology of pictorial saturation through which she establishes a continuum along which to measure the effect of the most figurative to the most literal images upon writerly and readerly textual ‘spaces.’ Part III adopts a phenomenological approach towards the reading-viewing experience as expressed in conceptual categories that include the trace, focal range, synesthesia, and rhythm and speed. The result is a provocative interplay of the categorical and the subjective that invites readers to think at once more precisely and more inventively about texts, images, and the intersections between the two.

Author Biography

Liliane Louvel is Professor at Poitiers University (France). She specializes in contemporary British literature and Word/Image relationship. She has published 5 books on this subject: L’|il du texte, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Le double miroir de l’art , Texte/image, images a lire et textes a voir, Le tiers pictural (2010). She has also edited 4 collections of essays on the subject. Laurence Petit is Associate Professor in the English Department of Universite Paul Valery-Montpellier 3, France. She has published several articles on text and image in contemporary British fiction, as well as translations of theoretical essays by George Bataille and Pierre Bourdieu. She is co-translator of A.S. Byatt’s latest novel, The Children’s Book (Paris: Flammarion, 2011). Karen Jacobs is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of The Eye’s Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture (Cornell 2001); and she is currently completing a book titled Trace Atlas: Itineraries of Postmodern Literary Space.