Words and images interact with each other in art and everyday life and do so in many different ways. Building on recent trends in linguistic analysis and visual semiotics, a vibrant interdisciplinary field of inquiry called “word-and-image studies” has developed over the past few decades. Much of this new scholarship, however, has originated in the French-speaking world and thus has not been available in English – until now.
Words and Images: A French Rendez-vous
features six new essays translated from the French by Anthony Wall. These explorations spin an adventurous web through time – from the very beginnings of human language on prehistoric cave walls, to the textual background of early modern and Enlightenment art, to the coexistence of a poem and a coloured drawing on an exterior wall in contemporary Paris – and through interdisciplinary space, from archaeology and anthropology to art history, literary and communications theory, and philosophy of mind.
The volume concludes with a bibliographical essay that provides an extensive summary of the most recent critical studies undertaken in France, Belgium, and Canada.