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Written by Liliane Louvel, professor emeritus at the University of Poitiers; Edited by Karen Jacobs, associate professor of English at CU; Translated by Laurence Petit, Université Paul Valéry-Monpellier

“Poetics of the Iconotext” makes available for the first time in English the theories of the respected French text/image specialist, Professor Liliane Louvel. A consolidation of the most significant theoretical materials of Louvel’s two acclaimed books, L’Oeil du Texte: Texte et image dans la littérature anglophone and Texte/Image: Images à lire, textes à voir, this newly conceived work introduces English readers to the most current thinking in French text/image theory and visual studies.

Focusing on the full spectrum of text/image relations, from medieval illuminated manuscripts to digital books, Louvel begins by introducing key terms and situating her work in the context of significant debates in text/image studies. Part II introduces Louvel’s s typology of pictorial saturation through which she establishes a continuum along which to measure the effect of the most figurative to the most literal images upon writerly and readerly textual ‘spaces.’

Part III adopts a phenomenological approach towards the reading-viewing experience as expressed in conceptual categories that include the trace, focal range, synesthesia and rhythm and speed. The result is a provocative interplay of the categorical and the subjective that invites readers to think at once more precisely and more inventively about texts, images and the intersections between the two.