Part of the adult reading experience, pictures did not simply embellish the Victorian illustrated book as we often conceive of illustration today; rather, pictures added meaning to a text, which, in turn, influenced how an audience “read” images, writing’s “sister act.” This course studies the relationship between literature and the visual arts in the Victorian period (1837-1901). It focuses on exemplary illustrated novels, picture-poems, and critical studies in aesthetics and literature, which either discern how a poem is like and different from a picture (the ut pictura poesis tradition) or comment upon the wedding of image and word as an art form.
The course first examines the ut pictura poesis tradition (Horace, Lessing, Plato) supporting the illustrated book. It then follows the development of the Victorian illustrated book as it transforms into the children's picture book at the turn of the twentieth century. Criticism in aesthetics encourages you to question the similarities and distinctions between the "sister arts" and the compatibility of word and image as an art form.