Victor Hugo Image

Image

Literature and Image in the Long Nineteenth Century

This book explores some of the ways in which word and image worked together in the nineteenth century, in terms of pictures, poetry and fiction. The authors keep in mind how word and image negotiate and compete for each other’s spaces. They seek to interrogate how image arises from absences in texts, and how image gives rise to narrative or voice. Topics include ekphrasis, illustration, literary representations of artists, the visual in writing, the staging of images and the textualization of theatrical tableaux, and related cultural and ideological tropes. This is covered in three main areas: ideological and philosophical resonances of image and text in fiction; the peculiar fusion of text and image that was the bread and butter of the Pre-Raphaelites; and book illustration, especially the tensions between writer and artist as authors of the text. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of Victorian literary and art history studies.

Image of the Sea

This book explores the unprecedented surge or oceanic feeling in the aesthetic expression of the romantic century. As secular thought began to displace the certainties of a sacral universe, the oceans that give life to our planet offered a symbol of eternity, rooted in the experience of nature rather than Biblical tradition. Images of the sea permeated the minds of the early Romantics, became a significant ingredient of romantic expression, and continued to emerge in the language, literature, art, and music of the nineteenth century. These pages document the evidence for this oceanic consciousness in some of the most creative minds of that century.