Phototextuality and the uses of literature in the modernist period 5

22 Maio 2018, 10:00 • Ângela Fernandes

During the final session of the seminar, four students present a case of word-image interaction related to their field of expertise. All cases are discussed by the entire group.

Phototextuality and the uses of literature in the modernist period  4

21 Maio 2018, 10:00 • Ângela Fernandes

The fourth session of the seminar is dedicated to a final discussion on Michael North’s essay and to some general remarks on the topics addressed during the previous discussions. Various concepts and approaches are further illustrated via the presentation of a specific phototext (Elio Vittorini’s Conversazione in Sicilia with 180 photographs by Luigi Crocenzi, 1953). In the second part of this session, two students present a case of word-image interaction related to their field of expertise.

Phototextuality and the uses of literature in the modernist period 3

18 Maio 2018, 10:00 • Ângela Fernandes

The first part of the session is dedicated to the presentation and discussion of a specific case of word-image interaction in the modernist period (short stories in illustrated magazines during the modernist period in Italy), to be analysed also on the basis of some of the concepts proposed by Mitchell and Sillars. The second part of the session is dedicated to the opening chapter of Michael North, Camera Works. Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word (Oxford University Press, 2005). The topics for discussion include the status of photography as “first modern art”, the multiple associations between photography and writing, in particular with regard to the ideal of a “transparent” language of nature, the paradoxical effects of the invention of the camera on the confidence in human perception, and the omnipresence of photography as a “technical, social and aesthetic context” for modernist art. 

Phototextuality and the uses of literature in the modernist period 2

17 Maio 2018, 10:00 • Ângela Fernandes

The first part of the class is dedicated to chapter 5 of Mitchell’s Picture Theory, and in particular to Mitchell’s reading of ekphrasis as ways of dealing with otherness, and to his discussion of what he calls a confusion between “differences in medium” and “differences in meaning”.

The second part of this session is dedicated to word-image interactions in illustrated novels from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. The class is based upon a thorough discussion of the opening chapter of Stuart Sillars, Visualisation in popular Fiction 1850-1960. Graphic narratives, fictional images (London, Routledge, 1995). Topics that are discussed include the cultural prejudices behind the relative neglect of the role of pictures in works of fiction, the multiple functions of illustrations in narrative fiction, the applicability of the concept of “unified discourse of word and image” proposed by Sillars, and the possibilities of a narratological analysis of this unified discourse. The students prepare the discussion on the topic of the session on the basis of a number of questions.

Phototextuality and the uses of literature in the modernist period 1

16 Maio 2018, 10:00 • Ângela Fernandes

The first session of the seminar is composed of a general introduction to the topic of the seminar. The multiple interactions between photography and literature in the modernist period are situated within a broader framework of literary history, cultural studies, media studies and word-image interactions from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. Several of these more general perspectives are addressed through an in-depth reading of selected chapters from W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (1994) (Introduction, Chapter 3, Chapter 5). Issues that will be addressed during the class regard methodological questions regarding the study of the verbal and visual, Mitchell’s criticism of (modernist aesthetics of) purity and medium specificity, his claim that all media are mixed media, and his analysis of broader cultural and ideological implications of word-image interactions. Students are asked to prepare the class with the help of a number of questions on the various chapters of the book.