Word and Image
in the Long Eighteenth Century
Word and Image
in the Long Eighteenth Century:
An Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Edited by
Christina Ionescu and Renata Schellenberg
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue,
Edited by Christina Ionescu and Renata Schellenberg
This book first published 2008 by
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2008 by Christina Ionescu and Renata Schellenberg and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-84718-504-5, ISBN (13): 9781847185044
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ................................................................................... viii
Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xiii
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
A Theoretical Framework for the Study of Eighteenth-Century Word
and Image Interaction
Christina Ionescu
PART I: VISUAL CULTURE
Chapter One............................................................................................... 24
Word and Image in the Representation of Marriage in the Eighteenth
Century
Chris Roulston
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 44
Understanding Painting, Print and Verse: Chardin’s Le Négligé
ou Toilette du matin
Ryan Whyte
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 55
Considering the Petimetra in a Selection of Goya’s Caprichos
and the Spanish Periodical El Censor
Ana Hontanilla
Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 81
Verbal-Visual Interaction in British Eighteenth-Century Drawing Books
Julia Mamolo Munro
vi
Table of Contents
PART II: VISUAL LANGUAGES
Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 104
Iphis Among the Goddesses: Hybridity, Progressive Ideology,
and the Visual Image
Elizabeth Kubek
Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 134
Illustrating Tom Jones: The Visual Culture of Fielding’s Realism
Leigh G. Dillard
Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 154
Seeing Feeling and Frustrating Reading in Laurence Sterne’s
A Sentimental Journey
Tanya Radford
Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 174
When the Painting Frame Blurs: The Sublime in the Promenade Vernet
Zeina Hakim
PART III: ON PORTRAITS
Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 190
The Image of the “Actor”: Fictional Portraits and Blurred Identities
in French Painting
Melissa Percival
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 210
From Portrait to Person: Representation and Reality in Rousseau’s
Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse
Catherine J. Lewis Theobald
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 227
A Monk, The Writer and His Painter: Diderot’s Imagining of a Fragonard
Jennifer Milam
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 248
Portrait as Text: Reading Visual Images in the Anna Amalia Bibliothek
Christina Lindeman
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
vii
PART IV: ON ILLUSTRATION
Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 268
The Death of the Immortal Hero: The Original Illustrations
of Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years’ War
Waltraud Maierhofer
Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 292
Text, Image, Fiction, Performance: A Case Study in Theatre
Iconography from French Fairground Drama
Guy Spielmann
Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 323
Abandoning Graphic Satire and Illustrating Text: Cruikshank’s
Crowning Himself Emperor of France, 1814
Christina Smylitopoulos
Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 343
William Blake and the Illustrated William Shakespeare:
Ut Pictura Poesis
Chantelle MacPhee
Conclusion............................................................................................... 358
Words and Images, Texts and Pictures
Renata Schellenberg
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1.1................................................................................................. Centrefold
Anonymous, Three Weeks Before and Three Weeks After Marriage
1.2................................................................................................. Centrefold
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Village Bride
1.3................................................................................................. Centrefold
William Hogarth, Marriage à la Mode: The Marriage Contract
1.4................................................................................................. Centrefold
William Hogarth, Marriage à la Mode: After the Marriage, or Early in the
Morning
1.5.............................................................................................................. 40
Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, The Marriage Bed
2.1.............................................................................................................. 46
Jacques-Philippe Le Bas after Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Le Négligé
ou Toilette du matin
2.2................................................................................................. Centrefold
Detail of smoke, Chardin, Le Négligé
2.3................................................................................................. Centrefold
Detail of smoke, Le Bas after Chardin, Le Négligé
2.4................................................................................................. Centrefold
Detail of clock face, Chardin, Le Négligé
2.5................................................................................................. Centrefold
Detail of clock face, Le Bas after Chardin, Le Négligé
2.6.............................................................................................................. 51
François-Bernard Lépicié after Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, La
Gouvernante
3.1.............................................................................................................. 62
Francisco de Goya, Volaverunt, Capricho 61
3.2.............................................................................................................. 72
Paul Legrand, The Snow
3.3.............................................................................................................. 74
Francisco de Goya, Joven bruja [¿mujer?] volando en una cuerda (Young
Witch [Woman?] Flying on a Rope Swing)
3.4.............................................................................................................. 75
Francisco de Goya, La mujer y la serpiente (Woman and Serpent)
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
ix
3.5.............................................................................................................. 76
Anonymous, Las cargas de un marido. Tomado de los mil modelos del día
(The Burdens of a Husband taken from the Thousand Models of the Day)
3.6.............................................................................................................. 77
Francisco de Goya, Ya tienen asiento (They Already Have a Seat)
3.7.............................................................................................................. 79
François-Rupert Carabin, A Seat
4.1.............................................................................................................. 85
Anonymous, The English Academy
5.1............................................................................................................ 123
Frontispiece to Book IX of George Sandys’ Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Englished, Mythologiz’d, and Represented in Figures
5.2............................................................................................................ 124
Illustration by Peter Van der Borcht, “The Girl Iphis Become Male,” from
P.Ovidii Nasonus Metamorphoses Expositae
5.3............................................................................................................ 125
Illustration by Bernard Salomon, “The Girl Iphis into Boy,” from La
Métamorphose d’Ovide Figurée
5.4............................................................................................................ 126
Illustration by Virgil Solis, “The Girl Iphis into Male,” from Spreng’s
Metamorphoses Illustratae
5.5............................................................................................................ 127
Illustration by C. M., from Pub. Ovidii Nasonus Metamophoseon
9.1................................................................................................. Centrefold
Alexis Grimou, The Actor
9.2............................................................................................................ 192
Carle Van Loo, Portrait of the Actor Préville
9.3............................................................................................................ 194
Alexis Grimou, Man in Oriental Costume
9.4................................................................................................. Centrefold
Jean-Baptiste Santerre, Woman in Spanish Costume
9.5................................................................................................. Centrefold
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Woman in Spanish Costume, Said to Be Portrait
of Mademoiselle Guimard
9.6................................................................................................. Centrefold
Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Lebrun, Portrait of Madame Perregaux
x
List of Illustrations
9.7............................................................................................................ 199
François Chauveau, Frontispiece to volume I of Molière, Œuvres
9.8............................................................................................................ 200
Portrait of the Actress Charlotte Desmares
9.9............................................................................................................ 202
Claude Nicolas Malapeau, illustration from act II scene 17 of Beaumarchais,
La Folle journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro
9.10. ......................................................................................................... 205
Jean-Baptiste Santerre, La Géométrie
11.1. .............................................................................................. Centrefold
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Parents’ Absence Turned to Account
12.1. ......................................................................................................... 249
Ferdinand Jagemann, Portrait of Anna Amalia Herzogin von SachsenWeimar-Eisenach
12.2. ......................................................................................................... 252
Rokokosaal, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek
12.3.......................................................................................................... 262
Tab. VI, Von Spielen und Vergnügungen
13.1. ......................................................................................................... 275
Penzel, Peter Ernst von Mansfeld Dies in the Arms of His Officers
13.2. ......................................................................................................... 278
Penzel, Wallenstein Being Murdered
13.3. ......................................................................................................... 280
Penzel, Death of Duke Bernhard von Weimar
13.4. ......................................................................................................... 283
Penzel, Baner Being Poisoned in Hildesheim
13.5.......................................................................................................... 286
Penzel, Lilienhoek’s Death near Leipzig
13.6. ......................................................................................................... 290
Page “December” and Monatskupfer by Penzel, Condé and Turenne
Honour the Memory of Brave Mercy on the Graveyard at Allersheim
14.1. ......................................................................................................... 299
Frontispiece for Phèdre (V, 6)
14.2. ......................................................................................................... 300
Frontispiece for Arlequin Protée (I, 1)
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
xi
14.3. ......................................................................................................... 302
Frontispiece for Le Monde renversé (sc. 1)
14.4. ......................................................................................................... 303
Frontispiece for Le Monde renversé (sc. 13)
14.5. ......................................................................................................... 306
Frontispiece for Arlequin invisible chez le roi de Chine (sc. 8)
14.6. ......................................................................................................... 309
Frontispiece for Arlequin Mahomet (sc. 11)
14.7. ......................................................................................................... 310
Frontispiece for La Forêt de Dodone (sc. 4)
14.8. ......................................................................................................... 312
Frontispiece for La Queuë de Vérité (sc. 2)
14.9. ......................................................................................................... 314
Frontispiece for Les Amours de Nanterre (sc. 12)
14.10. ....................................................................................................... 315
Frontispiece for La Grand-Mère Amoureuse. Parodie d’Atys en trois actes
(III, 6)
14.11. ....................................................................................................... 318
Frontispiece for Ulisse et Circé (II, 12)
14.12. ....................................................................................................... 319
Frontispiece for Les Spectacles malades (sc. 4)
15.1. .............................................................................................. Centrefold
George Cruikshank, Crowning Himself Emperor of France
15.2.......................................................................................................... 329
James Gillray, Destruction of the French Gun-Boats - or - Little Boney &
his Friend Talley in high Glee
15.3. ......................................................................................................... 331
Anonymous, Du Haut en Bas ou les Causes et les Effets” or, From Top to
Bottom
15.4. ......................................................................................................... 334
William Hogarth, A Harlot’s Progress, Plate 2
15.5. ......................................................................................................... 337
George Cruikshank, The New Union Club: Being a Representation of what
took place at a celebrated Dinner, given by a celebrated society
15.6. ......................................................................................................... 338
George Cruikshank, An Interesting scene, on board an East Indiaman,
showing the Effects of a heavy Lurch, after dinner
xii
List of Illustrations
15.7. ......................................................................................................... 340
James Gillray, Detail, The Grand Coronation Procession of Napoleon the
1st Emperor of France, from the Church of Notre Dam, December 2, 1804
15.8. .............................................................................................. Centrefold
James Gillray, 'Ci-devant occupations - or - Madame Talian and the
Empress Josephine dancing naked before Barrass in the Winter of 1797 a fact! - '
16.1. .............................................................................................. Centrefold
William Blake, King Lear and Cordelia in Prison
16.2. ......................................................................................................... 348
James Barry, King Lear Weeping Over the Dead Body of Cordelia
16.3. .............................................................................................. Centrefold
William Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing
16.4. William Blake, Pity ............................................................. Centrefold
16.5. ......................................................................................................... 354
William Blake, Hecate or The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank Kirsty Bell and our colleagues at Mount Allison
University who were supportive of this project and who offered advice
when needed. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Dean of Arts,
Dr. Hans vanderLeest, who helped provide the necessary funds to
complete this volume.
We also wish to thank Amanda Millar from Cambridge Scholars
Publishing for her invaluable assistance through the final stages of the
publication of this collection.
INTRODUCTION
A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
FOR THE STUDY OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
WORD AND IMAGE INTERACTION
CHRISTINA IONESCU
Watteau’s painted conversations,1 the performance of Racine’s
Britannicus on the evening of 3 June 1711 at the Comédie-Française,2
Clarissa’s pictorial representation in a Vandyke-style dress in
Richardson’s eponymous novel, representations of majas in Enlightenment
Spain,3 the La Tour portrait of Madame de Pompadour featuring a careful
1
I am alluding to Mary Vidal’s Watteau’s Painted Conversations: Art, Literature,
and Talk in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1992), in which the scholar expresses her
conviction that the concept of conversation lies at the core of the painter’s figural
imagery, arguing that an understanding of conversational practices and customs (as
described by French conversationalists from Montaigne onward and practiced in
the French salons of the seventeenth century) infuses Watteau’s visual universe
with meaning.
2
On the significance of this performance, see Jeffrey S. Ravel’s The Contested
Parterre: Public Theatre and French Political Culture, 1680-1791 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1999), especially 99-132. Ravel focuses on the ways in
which the spatial arrangement of the seats at the Comédie-Française affected
performances of plays and shaped public opinion by fostering an inevitable and at
times heated exchange between the infamous parterre and the actors interpreting
the plays, the implications of which extended far beyond theatrical walls.
3
In an interesting article, Dorothy Noyes considers the maja (urban plebeian
woman) from the point of view of Enlightenment intellectuals who associated the
figure with disruption in the social order and ideology (“La Maja Vestida: Dress as
Resistance to Enlightenment in Late-18th-Century Madrid,” The Journal of
American Folklore 111:440 [Spring 1998], 197-217). The maja is found in both
verbal and visual incarnations.
2
Introduction
arrangement of signifying accessories,4 Diderot’s ekphrastic writing in the
Salons, commedia dell’arte figurines,5 Lessing’s Laocoön,6 the Parisian
maison de plaisance of the Marquis de Trémicour in Bastide’s libertine
novella,7 Dorothy Richardson’s travel diaries with their combination of
meticulous note taking and sketching,8 the copiously-illustrated
Encyclopédie, Tiepolo’s Perseus and Andromeda (1730) with its
interpretation of the Greek myth, George Romney’s Shakespearean
4
Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Madame de Pompadour (1755), a pastel now
housed in the Musée du Louvre. In it the marquise is surrounded by a number of
familiar objects (identifiable books, a guitar, a music score, a globe and a portfolio
of art work)—signifying objects that suggest that she is not only a femme savante
but also a symbol of the Enlightenment. Colin Jones presents an insightful analysis
of this portrait and other iconographical materials representing or associated with
the mistress of King Louis XV in his Madame de Pompadour: Images of a
Mistress (London: National Gallery Company, 2002).
5
See Lynne Lawner, Harlequin on the Moon: Commedia dell’Arte and the Visual
Arts (New York: Abrams, 1998); and Meredith Chilton, Harlequin Unmasked: The
Commedia dell’Arte and Porcelain Sculpture (New Haven and London: The
George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art with Yale University Press, 2001).
6
In Laocoön (1766), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing is inspired by the celebrated group
statuary representing Laocoön and his sons, which was initially described by
Virgil. Lessing discusses the Horatian formula ut pictura poesis (“as is painting so
is poetry,” or more loosely translated as “poetry resembles painting”), developing
the essential differences between poetry and the visual arts. For a revisionary
analysis of this text, consult David E. Wellbery, Lessing’s Laocoön: Semiotics and
Aesthetics in the Age of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
7
Jean-François de Bastide, La petite maison (first published in 1758). For a recent
translation into English, see The Little House: An Architectural Seduction,
translated by Rodolphe El-Khoury (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1996). On the relationship between literature, architecture and the history of
mentalités in France, see Annik Pardailhé-Galabrun, La naissance de l’intime:
3000 foyers parisiens, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1988), as well as Monique Eleb-Vidal and Anne Debarre-Blanchard, Architecture
de la vie privée: Maisons et mentalités, XVIIe-XIXe siècles (Brussels: Archives
d’architecture moderne, 1989). It is now understood that rooms became
increasingly function-specific during the eighteenth century; literary texts of the
period are considered to be reliable sources in tracing this development. Michel
Delon’s study of the boudoir illustrates this observation (L’invention du boudoir
[Paris: Zulma, 1999]).
8
On this subject, consult Marcia Pointon, Strategies for Showing: Women,
Possession, and Representation in English Visual Culture, 1665-1800 ([Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997], 89-130), and Zoë Kinsley, “Considering the
Manuscript Travelogue: The Journals of Dorothy Richardson (1761-1801),” Prose
Studies 26:3 (December 2003), 414-431.
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
3
drawings,9 the engravings officially commissioned for the 1742 edition of
Pamela by Richardson himself,10 the tableau vivant of Julie’s death in
Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse,11 and Kauffman’s portraits of the woman
artist with their reliance on biographical accounts are examples of the
ways in which words and images are inextricably connected in eighteenthcentury art, literature and culture. Textual depictions of pictorial works
and architectural space, artworks inspired by or intertextually connected to
narratives,12 descriptive modes of expression in literature and art criticism,
material objects in fictional realms, book illustration (for novels,
travelogues and ephemera), theatre iconography, cinematic and stage
adaptations—are all composite verbal-visual forms. Whether it is framed
as a correspondence of the arts, examined as the copresence of formally
distinctive media of expression, analysed as a translation from a visual
language into a verbal language (or vice versa), contextualised as an
intersemiotic transposition or dialogue, posited as an interartistic affinity
or exchange, explored in a discourse on the power of visuality or
textuality, or theorised as the device generating an intermedial or
hybridised entity (an iconotext,13 imagetext, image-text or image/text14),
9
On visual images inspired by the Bard during the eighteenth century, see Stuart
Sillars, Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic, 1720-1820 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006). This book deals with the interesting tradition
of critical and interpretive painting and engraving that developed when eighteenthcentury artists chose to reject the transposition of Shakespearean plays in
performance to create instead images based on the newly available scholarly
editions.
10
For information on this interesting edition which features engravings by Hubert
Gravelot and Francis Hayman, see “Pamela Illustrations and the Visual Culture of
the Novel,” chapter 5 of Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor’s recent study, ‘Pamela’
in the Marketplace: Literary Controversy and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century
Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 143-176. The
authors also discuss a wide range of responses to Pamela on stage and in visual art.
11
Beautifully analysed by David Marshall in The Frame of Art: Fictions of
Aesthetic Experience, 1750-1815 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2005), 91-126.
12
Such as paintings that transform, reconstitute and reinterpret historical, biblical
or mythological narratives.
13
To my knowledge, the term is used for the first time by Alain Montandon in
“Pour une théorie du verbal et du plastique dans les iconotextes” (Le verbal et ses
rapports avec le non verbal dans la culture contemporaine, edited by JeanneMarie Clerc [Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 1989], 31-41). Montandon
reprises it in Iconotextes: Signe, texte, image (Paris: Ophrys, 1990), a collection of
articles that he also edited. Peter Wagner and Liliane Louvel are responsible for
further redefinitions and recontextualisations of the term. Refer to Peter Wagner’s
4
Introduction
this interaction of verbal and visual, scriptural and pictorial, text and
image, words and pictures, adds layers of sophistication and empowers the
imagination.
Today the study of the dialogue between verbal and visual systems of
communication is one of the most exciting and innovative fields of
academic scholarship. It operates primarily under the aegis of the
International Association of Word and Image Studies, an association
founded in July 1987, whose mandate is “to foster the study of Word and
Image relations in a general cultural context and especially in the arts in
the broadest sense.”15 IAWIS serves as the institutional nucleus of a field
that transcends national frontiers and disciplinary boundaries. Nonetheless,
in spite of a growing number of conferences and collections devoted to the
subject of word and image relations by IAWIS and its satellite
associations, no reader or comprehensive introduction to the field has
resulted to date, as it has been the case with visual culture16 and book
Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution (London: Reaktion
Books, 1995), and to his “Introduction: Ekphrasis, Iconotexts, and Intermediality—
the State(s) of the Art(s),” in the volume he edited under this title: Icons—Texts—
Iconotexts. Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality (Berlin and New York: Walter
de Gruyter, 1996), 1–40 (four contributions address specifically iconotexts in the
eighteenth century). For Liliane Louvel’s perspective, see L'œil du texte. Texte et
image dans la littérature anglaise (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail,
1998) and Texte/image. Images à lire, textes à voir (Rennes: Presses Universitaires
de Rennes, 2002). Incidentally, Liliane Louvel’s work is being translated into
English by Laurence Petit.
14
In Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), W. J. T. Mitchell distinguishes between
imagetext, image-text and image/text (see especially note 9 on page 89 for a clear
definition of the three forms).
15
As stated on the association’s official website (http://www.iawis.org/).
16
A significant number of studies which sought to define visual culture appeared
for the first time at the end of the 1990s and some of them have been reprinted
and/or reedited since then: for example, The Block Reader in Visual Culture,
edited by Jon Bird et al. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), which
contained classic writings on the subject that had appeared for the first time in the
seminal journal Block; John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin’s Visual Culture: An
Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), in which chapter 3
(“Visual Culture as a Field of Study and the Origins of Visual Culture Studies,”
31-50) is of particular interest even though it was written with undergraduates in
mind; The Visual Culture Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2005),
edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff and first published in 1998, had a revised and updated
second edition (2002), which was followed by several reprints; An Introduction to
Visual Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), also edited by Nicholas
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
5
history17—two fields with which word and image studies frequently
overlap and interact.
It can be argued that even a comprehensive anthology of out of print or
difficult to access key writings on word and image theory would do more
than just expose the reader to a plethora of objects and methods of study. It
would demonstrate clearly that the boundaries of the field extend far
beyond traditional discussions on the correspondence or interdependence
of the arts and matters pertaining to taste and aesthetics. It could include
essential texts by scholars such as Rudolph Arnheim, Jan Baetens, Mieke
Bal, Roland Barthes, Alain-Marie Bassy, Oskar Bätschmann, John Berger,
Gottfried Boehm, Norman Bryson, Omar Calabrese, Anne-Marie Christin,
Claus Clüver, Peter M. Daly, Hubert Damisch, Claude Gandelman, Ernest
B. Gilman, Ernst H. Gombrich, the Group µ, Philippe Hamon, James A.
W. Heffernan, Martin Heusser, Leo Hoek, Aron Kibédi Varga, Rensselaer
W. Lee, Liliane Louvel, Hans Lund, Louis Marin, W. J. T. Mitchell,
Manfred Muckenhaupt, Max Nänny, Mario Praz, Fernande Saint-Martin,
Rémy Saisselin, David Scott, Göran Sonesson, Wendy Steiner, and
Bernard Vouilloux, among many others. If this list seems fraught with
blatant omissions, it is because that is most likely the case—after all, the
field of word and image studies is not only complex but also
heterogeneous. Nowhere is this observation more evident than in this
collection, which shows that as practitioners, we are all bricoleurs,
assembling our own conceptual and theoretical clusters according to the
Mirzoeff and reprinted in 2000; and Visual Culture: The Reader, edited by Jessica
Evans and Stuart Hall (London: Sage Publications, 1999). An earlier collection had
previously sampled the field: Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations, edited by
Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan
University Press/University Press of New England, 1994). A second generation of
studies appeared at the beginning of this century. For their usefulness, I will single
out the following three: Malcolm Barnard’s Approaches to Understanding Visual
Culture (New York: Palgrave, 2001); James Elkins’ Visual Studies: A Skeptical
Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); and Matthew Rampley’s
collection Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
17
I am referring specifically to two significant contributions to the dissemination
of knowledge on book history and print culture: The Book History Reader, edited
by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (London and New York: Routledge,
2006 [2002]), and An Introduction to Book History, also edited by David
Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (New York: Routledge, 2005). The Society for
the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), established in 1991,
maintains a website (http://www.sharpweb.org/) with numerous links useful to
those interested in the study of illustrated books and print culture.
6
Introduction
eclectic interests that guide our investigations. Hence, at the risk of
sounding like an alarmingly enthusiastic neophyte, I would maintain that
even completing such a seemingly unremarkable task as compiling an
anthology of theoretical readings could be the first important stage in a
lengthy process that at the end would prove to be quite beneficial to the
advancement of research in the hybridised field of word and image studies.
First and foremost, the establishment of a body of canonical readings on
word and image implies conducting a reappraisal of the emergence of the
field, its histories and formative texts. It also carries with it the potential of
capturing the current state of a field whose development is severely
hampered by the lack of a universal metalanguage and which appears to be
eternally lost in an ever-expanding maze of theoretical writing. As it
presents and positions itself today, the field is in danger of being
completely engulfed or absorbed by visual culture.18 Not only its
autonomy but also its survival depend on its willingness to undergo a
process of reassessment and systematisation with the possible objective of
achieving the following goals: the clear and comprehensive classification
of word and image phenomena; the synthesising of current theoretical
18
W. J. T. Mitchell sees the history of Western culture as “in part the story of a
protracted struggle for dominance between pictorial and linguistic signs”
(Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology [Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1986], 43), coining a much-debated notion: “the pictorial turn” (Picture
Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, 11-35). While at the same
time acknowledging this divide, word and image theorists have generally posited
an equal partnership in their investigations of verbal-visual interaction.
Understandably, rather than being perceived as an immediate threat, visual culture
has been embraced by word and image studies. I argue that visual culture, with its
intrinsic prioritising of the visual, risks offsetting the balance in word and image
studies and that the question merits further consideration. It is interesting to note
that visual culture theorists themselves have reacted against this shift in power
brought about by the overwhelming interest in the image. Andrea Noble has
observed, for example, that “[v]isual culture, as proposed by some practitioners,
promises to liberate us from the limitations of narrative and textuality, and to
enable us to account for visuality, if not necessarily in visual terms, then at least on
the visual’s terms” (“Visual Culture and Latin American Studies,” The New
Centennial Review 4:2 [Fall 2004], 220). One of the early word and image
theorists, Mieke Bal refers to this phenomenon as “visual essentialism,” arguing
against a view of visual culture that would separate or isolate the visual from what
we collectively refer to as culture (“Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual
Culture,” Journal of Visual Culture 2:1 [April 2003], 5-32). See also the responses
to Bal’s article in the subsequent number of the journal and Deborah Cherry’s “Art
History Visual Culture” (Art History 27:4 [September 2004], 483-484; a special
number titled Art: History: Visual: Culture).
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
7
approaches; the identification of key issues and viewpoints defining them;
the detection of trends, tendencies and scholars who have commanded
attention on the critical and theoretical scene since the inception of what
some had always hoped would become a discipline.
What defines the framework of word and image studies of the
eighteenth century? The absence of analytic and comprehensive
compendia of word and image theory impacts most powerfully on the
comparative study of verbal and visual systems of communication in the
eighteenth century. What is most felt, in fact, is the absence of a
commonly agreed-upon language and system for analysing images.19 In
addition to the difficulty of working within a theoretical field that is as vast
as it is varied, as volatile as it is diffuse, a field furthermore lacking
clearly-defined objectives and truly-comparative methods of analysis, as
eighteenth-century specialists interested in word and image interaction we
face an additional challenge. The presence of eighteenth-century scholars
at word and image conferences remains conspicuously limited, in
19
By choosing “The Language of Images” as the theme of a recent word and
image conference (March 29-30, 2007; Central Connecticut State University; New
Britain, CT), the conference organisers drew attention to the lack of a functional
and universal language for analysing images. Despite its title, The Language of
Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), edited by W. J. T. Mitchell,
is more concerned with the meanings generated by images. Recent guides aiming
to teach visual literacy introduce the reader to a wide array of methods that can be
used to study the image, although not always to the same ones. For example,
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright’s Practices of Looking: An Introduction to
Visual Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; now in paperback)
contains three chapters of particular interest, namely on “Practices of Looking:
Images, Power, and Politics,” “Viewers Make Meaning” and “Spectatorship,
Power and Knowledge,” all with a potentially wide application across the fields.
Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of
Visual Materials (London: Sage Publications, 2001, with several reprints) calls
upon what she terms “compositional interpretation,” in addition to content
analysis, semiology, psychoanalysis, discourse analysis as well as other methods.
Richard Howells’ Visual Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003) looks at
images through the following theoretical prisms: iconology, form, art history,
ideology, semiotics and hermeneutics. Julia Thomas’ Reading Images (Readers in
Cultural Criticism) (New York: Palgrave, 2001) reprints classic writings on the
image that draw from psychoanalysis, semiotics, poststructuralism and
postmodernism. In the context of the eighteenth century, Maiken Umbach’s article
“Classicism, Enlightenment and the ‘Other’: Thoughts on Decoding EighteenthCentury Visual Culture” (Art History 25:3 [June 2002], 319-340) needs to be
singled out for its original and stimulating thoughts on understanding the visual
domain of the Enlightenment.
8
Introduction
comparison with that of colleagues specialising in contemporary art,
literature and cultural studies. The dix-huitiémistes interested in word and
image are certainly no less engaged or less active than others, rather, they
are more likely to present their work at annual conferences organised by
national and regional eighteenth-century societies or at specialised
colloquia devoted to the Enlightenment. At present, most eighteenthcentury associations are not only well established but also very receptive
to interdisciplinary or crossdisciplinary investigations. As a matter of fact,
it was the overwhelming response to a call for papers for a session devoted
to word and image at the annual meeting of the American Society for
Eighteenth-Century Studies in Montreal in 2006 that incited us to pursue
our interest by assembling a collection of essays on the subject. Our
selection appropriately reflects the variety of submissions made to the
original ASECS panel, while also highlighting the breadth of scholarly
attention invested and active in the field. Nonetheless, it must be noted that
the compartmentalisation20 of these two interests, the lack of an interactive
dialogue between the theoretical anchor of word and image and the
historical circumscription of eighteenth-century studies, may explain why
we have not yet seen the publication of studies that address the question of
vision, visuality and visual forms in the eighteenth century by means of a
general survey, and that do so in part through a comparative approach of
texts and pictures (such as Philippe Hamon’s Imageries or the collective
The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, which focus on the period
following the French Revolution21).
Undertaking a study of the interrelationships between verbal and visual
arts of the eighteenth century, one that needs to take into account word and
image theory and criticism in addition to art and literary history is no
doubt a challenge. Indeed, it involves conversing fluently on two distinct
means of expression, words and pictures, and on such diverse matters as
textuality and visuality, narrativity and iconicity, intertextuality and
20
In an excellent article that remains in many respects current on its assessment of
interdisciplinarity, Barbara Maria Stafford argues passionately for a
“noncompartmentalised interaction” between disciplines and fields of study (“The
Eighteenth-Century: Towards an Interdisciplinary Model,” The Art Bulletin 70:1
[March 1988], 6).
21
Philippe Hamon, Imageries: littérature et image au XIXe siècle (Paris: José Corti,
2001); Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski, eds., The NineteenthCentury Visual Culture Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). To
these one must add Jonathan Crary’s classic study Techniques of the Observer: On
Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990).
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
9
referentiality, the concept of the spectator and representational strategies,
discursive analysis and visual communication, culture and commerce,
models of production and consumption, images and ideology, and doing so
while remaining firmly grounded in a historical context. Mary Sheriff’s
revisionist study of Fragonard presents a perfect example of this sort of
undertaking at its best. The last chapter reconstructs a thought-provoking
dialogue among several verbal and visual representations on the same
theme: Fragonard’s The New Model (1770), its early prototype in a
thought painting created by Diderot in response to a request by Greuze
(Salon of 1767), the realisation of this verbal tableau with noteworthy
changes in a gouache by Baudouin (The Modest Model), and Diderot’s
infamous and contemptuous commentary on Baudouin’s work in the Salon
of 1769. In an impressively erudite and seemingly effortless fashion,
proving her interdisciplinary fluidity, Sheriff engages in a dialogue
between text and image that showcases her intimate knowledge of the
mechanisms at work in each medium of expression and her ability to
inscribe strategies of representation into a larger cultural context.22 Her
reliance on Diderot is not unusual in any respect. Principally since the
publication in the early eighties of two thought-provoking and pathbreaking studies, namely Michael Fried’s penetrating analysis of the
aesthetic experience of absorption and Norman Bryson’s classic study of
the evolution of narrative styles in French painting of the Ancien Régime,
discussions of Diderot’s engagement with painting and the visual have
dominated word and image studies of the eighteenth century.23
Where are current word and image studies being published? How are
they classified in bibliographies inventorying studies of the eighteenth
22
Mary D. Sheriff, Fragonard: Art and Eroticism (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1990).
23
Michael Fried’s Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age
of Diderot (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980) inaugurated a
new direction in scholarship. Fried carefully examines Diderot’s reactions to
paintings as captured mainly by his Salons. In his Word and Image: French
Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
Norman Bryson devotes two chapters to Diderot: “Diderot and the word” (154178) and “Diderot and the image” (179-203). For more recent studies on the topic,
see Philippe Déan, Diderot devant l’image (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), and
Suzanne R. Pucci’s Sites of the Spectator. Emerging Literary and Cultural
Practice in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001; SVEC
2001:09 [2001]). The sheer volume of studies devoted to Diderot can no doubt
seem overwhelming at times, but it appropriately reflects the layers of complexity
in an extraordinary mind that we are still trying to unravel.
10
Introduction
century?24 A preliminary investigation of the field reveals that as scholars,
in addition to being guided by our own concerns and interests, we are
necessarily conditioned by disciplinary training and focus. Engaging in a
transdisciplinary exploration of literature and the visual arts, however,
takes us out of our comfort zone and can make us navigate oftentimes
blindfolded in deserted or mined fields, but it can also lead us to uncharted
territories and unexpected discoveries, while it opens new interpretative
vistas. More often than not, it sheds new light on our understanding of
subjects and themes that we choose to place at the forefront of our inquiry:
the representation of intimacy and domesticity;25 the display of behaviours,
sentiments and beliefs;26 the construction of exoticism and the Other;27 the
24
Although bibliographies compiling studies of the eighteenth century include
sections devoted to emerging fields of interest in addition to more traditional
categories (author, country, discipline, etc.), sections devoted specifically to word
and image investigations continue to be conspicuously absent. Kevin Berland’s
C18-L’s Selected Readings (http://www.personal.psu.edu/special/C18/sr/sr.htm)
includes categories such as “Bibliography, Bibliophily, History of Authorship,
Reading, Print Culture, Publishing, Libraries, Textual Edition,” “Geography,
Cartography, Topography, Travel and Voyages,” and “Material Culture and the
Decorative Arts,” which can often be of interest to scholars working in the field of
word and image studies. The Eighteenth Century Current Bibliography distributes
them in sections as varied as “Printing and Bibliographical Studies,” “Historical,
Social, and Economic Studies,” and “Fine Arts,” in addition to the ones compiling
various literatures. Although the MLA International Bibliography does not
recognise “Word and Image” in its list of subject headings, it does include various
relevant terms (for example, ekphrasis, image, representation and ut pictura
poesis). The IAWIS website itself lacks a much-needed bibliographical section (it
does list and review, however selectively, new publications).
25
Richard Rand, ed., Intimate Encounters: Love and Domesticity in EighteenthCentury France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Tita Chico,
Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century English Literature
and Culture (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005); Michael McKeon,
The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Kate Retford, The Art of
Domestic Life: Family Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2006).
26
On idolatry, see for example, Anne Betty Weinshenker, “Idolatry and Sculpture
in Ancien Régime France” (Eighteenth-Century Studies 38:3 [Spring 2005], 485507), which situates the issue of idolatry “at a complex and controversial
intersection of the visual arts with theology” (485).
27
Julia V. Douthwaite, Exotic Women: Literary Heroines and Cultural Strategies
in Ancien Régime France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), a
study remarkably ahead of its time; Beth Fowkes Tobin, Picturing Imperial
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
11
formation of identity through ownership and display of material objects;28
the mechanism of eroticism and the logic of the gaze;29 and the
participation of women in the public sphere.30 Adopting an
interdisciplinary approach to the study of word and image interaction by
relying, for example, on the history of art and material culture, visual
rhetoric and semiotics, iconology and iconography, hermeneutics and
reception theories, new historicism and collective social history (histoire
des mentalités), gender studies and feminism, as well as literary and
cultural studies, can lead to a multifaceted and profound understanding of
the Enlightenment. The application of diverse modes of investigating and
evaluating can only nuance and enrich our view of a wide array of subject
matters. One need only refer to Barbara Maria Stafford’s body of work to
substantiate this claim.31 It is evident that, by effacing restrictive
Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1999), and Colonising Nature: The Tropics in British Arts
and Letters, 1760-1820 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005);
Troy Bickham, Savages within the Empire: Representations of American Indians
in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Monique
Moser-Verrey and Peggy Davis, eds., Études littéraires 37:3 (2006), special
issue “Les Européens des Lumières face aux indigènes: image et textualité.”
28
See John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods
(London: Routledge, 1993); Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, eds., The
Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text (London: Routledge,
1995); Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 16001800 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger,
eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires, and Delectable Goods
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Dena Goodman and Kathryn
Norberg, eds., Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us
about the European and American Past (New York: Routledge, 2007).
29
In chronological order: Jean-Marie Goulemot, Ces livres qu’on ne lit que d’une
main: Lecture et lecteurs de livres pornographiques au XVIIIe siècle (Aix-enProvence: Alinéas, 1991); Peter Wagner, ed., Erotica and Enlightenment
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991); Lynn Hunt, ed., The Invention of Pornography:
Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800 (New York: Zone Books,
1993); Julie Peakman, Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in
Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). See also
Philip Stewart’s Engraven Desire, cited below in note 51.
30
I will only mention here Madelyn Gutwirth’s The Twilight of the Goddesses:
Women and Representation in the Revolutionary Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1992).
31
Barbara Maria Stafford has explored her interest in visual perception and
communication through a series of multidisciplinary investigations that delve into
architectural history, cultural geography, pedagogical methods, the history of
12
Introduction
boundaries, this approach opens up a stimulating and vibrant field of
research, forcing us to rethink, revise and reinvent the eighteenth century
that we have traditionally encountered and envisioned, explored and
interpreted in our work.
Conventional studies of word and image relations in the eighteenth
century have always been classified in the category “Literature and the
(Other) Arts,” and more recently, “Literature and the Visual Arts,” two
designations which inaccurately suggest that this field of investigation is
restricted to analogies or contrasts between “the sister arts” and matters
concerning taste and aesthetics.32 Occasionally, conferences have been
organised around the theme of an author’s relations with the visual arts
during his time,33 and special issues of academic journals as well as
general publications have continued to assemble articles exploring
connections between literature and painting.34 Until recently, the study of
the relation between words and images in the long eighteenth century was
exclusively defined along these lines of inquiry and the classification “Art
and Literature” still regroups studies that do not necessarily examine any
form of interaction between the two domains.35 More often than not, these
traditional investigations centred on subjects that were part of the
intellectual history of the Enlightenment—Batteux, Diderot, Dubos,
Goethe, Lessing, and Reynolds all belonged to a long line of thinkers who
science and technology, as well as medicine and body studies. See especially: Body
Criticism: Imagining the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge,
MA, and London: MIT Press, 1991); and Artful Science: Enlightenment
Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, MA, and London:
MIT Press, 1994).
32
Parenthetically, the Modern Languages Association itself has maintained to date
the division “Literature and the Other Arts” in its classification of
“Interdisciplinary Approaches” despite a growing number of significant shifts and
ramifications that have marked the overall organisation of disciplines and fields of
inquiry.
33
Published proceedings often result from these conferences: for example, the
special number of Études rétiviennes on Restif de la Bretonne and the image (31
[January 2000], “Rétif et l’image”), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les arts visuels,
edited by Frédéric S. Eigeldinger (Geneva: Droz, 2003; in the journal Annales de
la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 45 [2003]).
34
See, for instance, Le dialogue des arts, I: Littérature et peinture du Moyen Âge
au XVIIIe siècle, edited by Jean-Pierre Landry and Pierre Servet (Lyons:
C.E.D.I.C./Université Jean Moulin, 2001).
35
For example, Art and Literature in Spain, 1600-1800: Studies in Honour of
Nigel Glendinning, edited by Charles Davis and Paul Julian Smith (London:
Tamesis, 1994).
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
13
reflected in great detail on the links between art and literature. In their
comparative analyses of visual poetics, rhetorical strategies and artistic
representation in the eighteenth century, contemporary scholars address
more and more aspects such as the intrinsic mechanism of verbal and
visual languages, the powers of memory and the imagination, the
perceived primacy of nature and art, the picturesque and the sublime,
ekphrasis and intermediality, mimesis and referentiality, as well as the
theory and practice of description. Despite their different emphases, these
critics generally share a common interest in historical accounts of issues
and debates orienting ut pictura poesis developments during the
Enlightenment.36 Nonetheless, as recent research clearly indicates, word
and image studies have been instrumental in inciting us to move beyond
the word and image opposition and to recognise the importance of vision
and visuality in producing meanings, establishing aesthetics values, and
promulgating gender stereotypes and power relations within culture. If this
subject matter continues to interest scholars, it now finds its place in
interdisciplinary studies of connections between painting and literature
that are primarily theoretical or cultural in orientation.37
A direct result of globalisation and digital media, the recent emergence
of visual culture as an important field of academic inquiry has impacted all
disciplines, and in particular art history, whose practitioners had long been
36
Volume 4: The Eighteenth Century of The Cambridge History of Literary
Criticism, edited by H. B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005; first published in 1997). Under “Literature and Other
Disciplines,” it includes a section on “Taste and Aesthetics” followed by a section
devoted to “Literature and the Other Arts,” the latter being composed of four parts
(three of which are relevant to our discussion: “Ut Pictura Poesis” and “The
Picturesque,” both expertly authored by David Marshall, and “Parallels between
the Arts,” an interesting reflection by Dean Mace). For the French perspective,
refer to Angelica Goodden’s “Painting for the Eye and Painting for the Mind:
Correspondences of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century France” (The Oxford Art
Journal 7:1 [1984], 3-14).
37
Bernard Vouilloux has published extensively on this topic. See in particular La
peinture dans le texte (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1994), which offers a theoretical
examination of the modalities of interaction of text and image. A more recent study
is also relevant in this context: Daniel Bergez, Littérature et peinture (Paris:
Armand Colin, 2004). Collections such as The Romantic Imagination: Literature
and Art in England and Germany (edited by Jürgen Klein and Frederick Burwick
[Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996]) and Image and Word. Reflections of Art
and Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present (edited by Antonella Braida
and Giuliana Pieri [Oxford: Legenda, 2003]) have paved the way for new
directions in word and image scholarship.
14
Introduction
frustrated by the limitations of traditional methods, values and rhetoric. As
it is currently defined and explored in theoretical writings, visual culture
appears to be an engaging field of the here and now, one which is founded
nonetheless on the premise that images have always been central to the
representation of the world and to the communication of meaning, at
present arguably more so than ever. As it was perhaps to be expected,
“visual culture” quickly became a fashionable addition to titles, subtitles
and back cover descriptions, qualifying a wide spectrum of studies, and
aiming at banking unreservedly on the combined power of two buzzwords,
visual and culture. Yet investigations of eighteenth-century visual culture
are not in any way relegated to the sidelines of mainstream scholarship or
excluded from the respected forums of discussion in our field.38 As a
consequence, it is a truism to state now that a vibrant and influential
eighteenth-century visual culture existed in Europe. In fact, the four
contributions grouped in the section “Visual Culture” in this collection
lead us to believe that it was even more important than we had initially
thought. In recent years we have witnessed the publication of a
proliferation of studies addressing such disparate topics as war, hair,
childhood, peasantry, madness, drawing, prostitution and balloonomania
by attempting to foreground the role print images played in formulating
ideas and shaping ideologies, and doing so while also relying heavily on
written documentation, fictional and nonfictional in nature.39 Far from
38
As editor-in-chief of Eighteenth-Century Studies from 1998 to 2004, Bernadette
Fort introduced and prioritised the exploration of visual culture through the
coverage of exhibitions. Books dealing primarily with this subject were reviewed
frequently. It was also during this period that the publication of illustrative images
in the journal became a regular feature of articles.
39
See respectively: Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill, eds., Conflicting Visions:
War and Visual Culture in Britain and France, c. 1700-1830 (Aldershot, UK, and
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005); special number on “Hair” of Eighteenth-Century
Studies (38:1 [Fall 2004]; edited by Angela Rosenthal); Anja Müller, ed.,
Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: Age and Identity (Aldershot,
UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006) (especially Patricia Crown’s contribution,
“The Child in the Visual Culture of Consumption 1790-1830,” 63-80); Amy S.
Wyngaard, From Savage to Citizen: The Invention of the Peasant in the French
Enlightenment (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2004); Jane Kromm,
The Art of Frenzy: Public Madness in the Visual Culture of Europe, 1500-1850
(London and New York: Continuum, 2002); Ann Bermingham, Learning to Draw:
Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art (New Haven: Yale
University Press/Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2000); Sophie
Carter, Purchasing Power: Representing Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century
English Popular Print Culture (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century
15
lining up haphazard and superficial processions of images, these studies
conduct in-depth investigations in a wealth of visual materials which are
becoming more and more accessible (mainly as a result of the
digitalisation of archival material and primary sources visual in nature or
with visual content): among them, paintings and prints, maps and
topographical drawings, botanical catalogues and illustrated travelogues,
commemorative sculpture and historical artefacts. Although the visual
construction of realities is still being assessed by historians while it finds
itself more and more integrated in their research,40 visual semiotics
especially has succeeded in convincing the general public that images
played a significant role in the creation and dissemination of attitudes,
beliefs and ideas. It is thus interesting to observe a change in expectations:
both specialists and general readers now expect the presence of
illustrations in these studies to be no longer incidental or supplementary
but illustrative in the true sense of the word—that is, acting or serving as
an illustration to the theses defended, as integral or vital to the overall
argument.
To discover that the number of studies exploring visual culture from a
feminist perspective has grown exponentially in the last decade of
scholarship will not surprise anyone, and certainly not the contributors to
this volume. As Amelia Jones has noted, “feminism has long
acknowledged that visuality (the conditions of how we see and make
meaning of what we see) is one of the key modes by which gender is
culturally inscribed in Western culture.”41 What’s more, in a recent
contribution to the examination of interdisciplinarity in the eighteenth
century, Joan B. Landes traces the development of women’s studies and
visual studies, attributing their strength and vitality to their existence as
repositories of different canons, methods, theories, and last but not least,
2004), and chapter 2, “Women in the Street: Prostitutes and Market Vendors” (3979) of Cindy McCreery’s The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late EighteenthCentury England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Paul Keen, “The
‘Balloonomania’: Science and Spectacle in 1780s England,” Eighteenth-Century
Studies 39:4 (Summer 2006), 507-535.
40
On the assessment of approaches to visual material by historians, see History
and Images: Towards a New Iconology, edited by Axel Bolvig and Philip Lindley
(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003).
41
Amelia Jones, “Introduction: Conceiving the Intersection of Feminism and
Visual Culture,” in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia
Jones (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 1.
16
Introduction
disciplines.42 This characteristic inclusiveness has embraced visual culture
in all its forms. As various essays in this collection demonstrate, three
particular tendencies are predominant in the current and widespread
application of feminist theory to the examination of eighteenth-century
visual culture: first, a focus on female agency through analyses of
performative acts and patterns of consumption deemed instrumental in the
construction of feminine identity and in the display of visual
empowerment; second, a consideration of objects such as portraits as
complex cultural artefacts, embedded in a system of class, politics and
gender; and third, a reassessment of representations of the human body
with reference to their historical, political and mythographical context of
production.
In this category, some studies informed and shaped by feminist
ideology are particularly worthy of mention for their impact on eighteenthcentury scholarship. Marcia Pointon’s extensive contribution to the study
of English visual culture looks at the cultural effects and consequences of
women’s involvement in acts of representation and the world of
consumption.43 In Private Interests: Women, Portraiture, and the Visual
Culture of the English Novel, 1709-1791, Alison Conway examines
women’s relation to literary and pictorial portraiture in the foreground of
what she considers to be an eighteenth-century society invested in vision
and visual culture. The analysis of portraits allows the critic to highlight
the emergence of a visual agency that is uniquely feminine, one that
witnesses women become spectacles or spectators at play in life’s private
and public arenas.44 In their introduction to the collection Women, Art, and
the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Melissa Hyde and
Jennifer Milam propose to “advance the understanding of the significant
role that women played in the visual culture of the Enlightenment.”45 The
focus of their collection is on the ways in which women as artists or
subjects in painting, patrons and collectors, used art to fashion identities
for themselves.
42
Joan B. Landes, “Trespassing: Notes from the Boundaries,” SVEC 2005:04
(2005), 117-123 (see note 53 below).
43
See especially: Marcia Pointon, Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession, and
Representation in English Visual Culture, 1665-1800, cited above in note 8.
44
Alison Conway, Private Interests: Women, Portraiture, and the Visual Culture
of the English Novel, 1709-1791 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
45
Melissa Hyde and Jennifer Milam, “Introduction: Art, Cultural Politics and the
Woman Question,” in Women, Art, and the Politics of Identity in EighteenthCentury Europe, edited by Melissa Hyde and Jennifer Milam (Aldershot, UK, and
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 3.