The Pictorial Third: An Essay into Intermedial Criticism examines the extent to which poetry intertwines with painting and the visual at large, and studies the singular relationship established between language and image, observesing the modalities and workings of what is termed ‘intermedial transposition‘. By following a critical method of the close analysis of texts, the book examines to what extent the "pictorial" tool may be of help to analyze literary texts and thus enlarge and enrich literary criticism. Examining the technical notions typical of the medium and its history, including perspective, framing, colour, anamorphosis, trompe-l’œil, Veronica veil, still life, portrait, figure, illusion, apparatus, genres and styles, this volume presents a pragmatics of image-in-text and of the visual-in-text as an operative tool. This "pictorial" reading necessarily includes synesthesia and the senses; it also functions as a reading event , or what happens to one when one unawares encounters a picture (be it present in the book or the object of an ekprhasis). Thus the body is eventually given back a role to play. The sensitive approach has its own resonances and the eye or the gaze sometimes sees double in such intermedially oriented texts. This volume proposes to identify the pictorial third as the phenomenon which can be apprehended in terms of effect or affect not only as a concept.

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.

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Art explores the links between literature and visual art from classical ekphrasis through to contemporary experimental forms. The collection’s engagement with diverse literary and cultural artifacts offers a comprehensive survey of the vibrant interrelationships that currently inform literary studies and the arts. Featuring four sections, the first part provides an overview of theoretical approaches to art and literature from philosophy and aesthetics through to cognitive neuroscience. Part two examines one of the most important intersections between text and image: the workings of ekphrasis across poetry, fiction, drama, comics, life and travel writing, and architectural treatises. Parts three and four consider intermedial crossings from antiquity to the present. The contributors examine the rich intermedial experiments that range from manuscript studies to infographics in graphic narratives, illuminating the vibrant ways in which texts have intersected with illustration, music, dance, architecture, painting, photography, media installations, and television. Throughout this dynamic collection of 37 chapters, the contributors evolve existing critical debates in innovative new directions. The volume will be a critical resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as specialist scholars working in literary studies, philosophy of art, text and image studies, and visual culture. The Introduction and Chapters 10, 14 and 37 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.