Reading iconotexts : from Swift to the French Revolution / Peter Wagner.
Material type: TextSeries: Picturing historyPublisher: London : Reaktion Books, 1995Description: 211 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 094846271X
- 9780948462719
- 704.949909 20
- PN53 .W24 1995
Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | City Campus City Campus Main Collection | 704.949909 WAG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | A195560B |
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704.9497948 VID Videogames and art / | 704.94979651 WAL Walking / | 704.9498087074421 LAU Laughing in a foreign language. | 704.949909 WAG Reading iconotexts : from Swift to the French Revolution / | 704.94991 THO Experimental geography / | 704.94993 ART Art and organised labour : images of working life and trade union life in New Zealand / | 704.9499405318 THI This way : covering/uncovering Tadeusz Borowski's this way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen / |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-208) and index.
Acknowledgements -- 1. How to (Mis)Read Prints -- 2. Captain Gulliver and the Pictures -- 3. Frame-work: The Margin(al) as Supplement and Countertext -- 4. 'Official Discourse' in Hogarth's Prints -- 5. Obscenity and Body Language in the French Revolution -- 6. In Lieu of a Conclusion -- References -- Bibliography -- Index.
Traditionally, texts and images have been discussed together on the assumption that they are 'sister arts', but in Reading Iconotexts Peter Wagner pushes beyond the word-image opposition in a radical attempt to break down the barriers between literature and art. He sets out here the new approach he has identified for dealing with the 'iconotext' - a genre in which neither image nor text is free from the other. Examples include Swift's Gulliver's Travels, a number of William Hogarth's best-known engravings, and a sample of the so-called 'obscene' propaganda prints that were published during the French Revolution. Throughout, the author argues for the importance of seeing text and image as mutually interdependent in the ways they establish meaning.
It becomes clear in the course of Wagner's exposition that one cannot study prints without taking into account their accompanying inscriptions; whilst illustrated books contain two kinds of 'text' - one verbal, one visual - that are invariably at odds with one another. Drawing on theories of intertextuality and semiotics as developed by Barthes and Kristeva, as well as post-structuralist studies by Derrida, Foucault and others, Reading Iconotexts treats pictures as encoded visual discourse and illustrations in books as counter-discourse. The author's persuasively argued polemic in favour of recognising the 'iconotext' as a viable advance in methodology is an important contribution to current debates on word and image.
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