ENG 261 - Literature & The Visual Arts

1 course unit

The course will explore the multiple relationships between word and image in a variety of interdisciplinary texts. We will examine the genres of illustration (poem and novel), composite text, ekphrasis, children’s story, concrete and imagist poetry, the graphic novel, and film. Historically, the scope of the course is broad, reaching from the classical period to last year. We’ll move from The Iliad to a comic strip, from a children’s picture book to the revolutionary poetics of Blake’s dynamic art. The course will trace the increasing sophistication and partnership of the word/image relationship as we move deeper into the digital age. Texts may include William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794); Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (illus. Gustave Doré, 1877); W. C. Williams, Pictures from Brueghel (1960); Foucault, This is Not a Pipe (1977); Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers (2004); and critical works such as Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1993) and W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory (1993).
Meets general academic requirement L and effective Fall 2013 HU.