Close
In February 2006, the English Language and Literature Department hosted its fourth annual postgraduate conference. The theme of the event-"The Mind's Eye: Perspectives on Word and Image"-drew participants from throughout the British Isles and farther afield, from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States.
The interdisciplinary thrust of the conference encouraged contributors to approach the literary-visual dynamic from a variety of critical standpoints. While some panellists discussed specific instances of textual and pictographic convergence (concrete poetry, graphic fiction), others addressed the influence of visual art upon particular writers such as Woolf, Joyce, Nabokov and Rossetti. The history and function of illustration was broadly considered, from John Lydgate's 16th century text, Siege of Thebes, to Kurt Vonnegut's short stories in the Saturday Evening Post. An entire panel was devoted to ekphrasis-the representation of image through language.
The theoretical significance of text-image coalescence was as a dominant concern at the proceedings. Panellists and audience members discussed the rhetorical and semiotic strategies involved in the production and reception of visual and literary art; what interpretive methods, for example, are relevant to poetic analysis but would not help us to understand a "painted poem"? Why are some combinations of word and image "disruptive" (Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy), while others "harmonious" (Mary Kelly's "Post-Partum Document")? These abstract considerations were balanced by practical ones; invoking the untraditional textual graphics of Ernest Nister, Roy Fisher and the Circle Press, a number of panellists described the effects of image-integration upon the book object itself.
The current issue of Moveable Type samples these critical engagements. The articles are elaborations of papers presented at the Mind's Eye conference and, together with Leon茅e Ormond's keynote address, they represent shrewd and imaginative responses to a growing body of visual texts. In addition to these articles, we are pleased to present book and film reviews by postgraduate students, and we encourage review submissions for upcoming issues of Moveable Type.
Kiki Benzon