The Imaginary / L’Imaginaire: Word and Image / Texte Et Image

The imaginary as a critical concept originated in the twentieth century and has been theorized in diverse ways. It can be understood as a register of thought; the way we interpret the world; the universe of images, signs, texts, and objects of thought. In this volume, it is explored as it manifests itself in encounters between the verbal and the visual. A number of the essays brought together here explore the transposition of the imaginary in illustrations of texts and verbal renditions of images, as well as in comic books based on paintings or on verbal narratives. Others analyze ways in which books deal with film or television and investigate the imaginary in digital media. Special attention is paid to the imaginary of places and the relationship of the imaginary with memory. Written in English and French, these contributions by European and American scholars demonstrate the various concerns and approaches characteristic of contemporary scholarship in word and image studies.

Claus Clüver, an Indiana University professor emeritus of Comparative Literature, has also taught at New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, and in several European and Brazilian universities. His publications include a book in German on 20th-century theatre and over forty essays on the history, theory, and practice of intermedial and interarts studies, especially on Concrete and visual poetry, intersemiotic transposition and ekphrasis, and representation in the arts. He is co-editor of The Pictured Word (1998), Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000-2000 (2004), Orientations: Space/Time/Image/Word (2005, all Rodopi), and Intermidialidade (UFMG, Brazil, 2006).

Matthijs Engelberts is based at the University of Amsterdam, where his current research is centered primarily on aspects of mediality in modern literature and (other) narrative art media. His publications include books, edited volumes, and articles in French and English on (genre and media- related questions in) surrealist theatre, the contemporary drama text, theatresports, Beckett, Tardieu, Duras, Molière, Philippe Claudel, and other authors. He is a member of the core editorial board of the bilingual journal Samuel Beckett Today/aujourd’hui.

Véronique Plesch, Professor of Art History at Colby College, has published on subjects ranging from Passion iconography to art in the Duchy of Savoy, and from passion plays to early modern graffiti, with forays into contemporary art. She is the author of Illuminating Words: The Artist’s Books of Christopher Gausby (Smith College Museum of Art, 1999), Le Christ peint: le cycle de la Passion dans les chapelles peintes du XVe siècle dans les États de Savoie (Société Savoisienne d’Histoire et d’Archéologie, 2004), Painter and Priest: Giovanni Canavesio and the Passion Cycle at Notre-Dame des Fontaines, La Brigue (U of Notre Dame P, 2006). She also co-edited The Cultural Processes of Appropriation (special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2002), Orientations: Space/Time/Image/Word (Rodopi, 2005), Elective Affinities: Testing Word and Image Relationships (Rodopi, 2009), Efficacité/Efficacy: How To Do Things With Words and Images? (Rodopi, 2011). She is the current President of the International Association of Word and Image Studies.