Visual Words: Art and the Material Book in Victorian EnglandVictorian England witnessed a remarkable growth in literacy culminating in the new literary nationalism that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. Visual Words provides a unique and interdisciplinary evaluation of the relationship between images and words in this period. Each chapter explores a different aspect of this relationship: the role of Dickens as the heroic author, the book as an iconic object, the growing graphic presence of the text, the role of the graphic trace, the 'Sister Arts/ pen and pencil' tradition, and the competition between image and word as systems of communication. Examining the impact of such diverse areas as advertising, graphic illustration, narrative painting, frontispiece portraits, bibliomania, and the merchandising of literary culture, Visual Words shows that the influence of the 'Sister Arts' tradition was more widespread and complex than has previously been considered. Whether discussing portraits of authors, the uses of iconography in Ford Madox Brown's painting Work, or examining why the British Library was equipped with false bookcases for doors, Gerard Curtis looks at artistic and literary culture from an art historical and 'object' perspective to gain a better understanding of why some Victorians called their culture 'hieroglyphic'. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
pen and pencil as trace | 7 |
The hieroglyphic image | 57 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Visual Words: Art and the Material Book in Victorian England Gerard Curtis No preview available - 2021 |
Visual Words: Art and the Material Book in Victorian England Gerard Curtis No preview available - 2020 |
Common terms and phrases
advertising adverts aesthetic Altick artists beautiful Bible Bibliomania binding Bleak House British Cambridge catalogue Charles Dickens contemporary created Cruikshank D'Israeli death decorative Dickens House Dickens House Museum Dickens's disembodied hand drawing England English engraving Exhibition featured female Figure Ford Madox Brown Frith frontispiece Gallery George George Cruikshank graphic History Ibid iconic iconography Illustrated London imagery importance Isaac D'Israeli John Journal labour letters Library linked literary culture literature Little Dorrit Maclise Magazine male Martin Chuzzlewit modern narrative Nicholas Nickleby nineteenth century noted novels object painter painting painting's pen and pencil Photograph pictorial popular portrait of Dickens portraiture poster Pre-Raphaelite promoted publishing Punch quill quoted reader reading represented Rossetti Ruskin serial sexual sister arts social symbolic Tate Gallery textual tradition University Press Victorian Victorian Literature visual W. G. Collingwood William women word