Claudia Esposito (University of Massachusetts Boston)

Texts and images have long been in an intersemiotic dialogue with each other; whether we think of classical poets like Horace (famous for his assertion ut pictura poesis/as is painting, so is poetry) or 19th-century writers and painters such as Baudelaire and Delacroix who critically juxtaposed painting and writing, or even Abdelkébir Khatibi’s reflections on tapestry, calligraphy and the novel, questions of writing, language and image have been at the forefront of French and Francophone cultural production and theoretical inquiry (Heidegger, Derrida, Barthes). In what context, and to what effect, do writers and artists draw upon multiple mediums of expression? What does the interweaving of forms afford them and are these writers/artists, through their complex patterns of representation, striving to reach beyond common notions of mimesis? How and when do artists refuse or erect boundaries between image and text and in what circumstances are the two placed in a hierarchical structure? This panel will consider 20th- and 21st-century prose, poetry, the graphic novel and hybrid genres.

Texts and images have long been in an intersemiotic dialogue with each other; questions of writing, language, and image have been at the forefront of French and Francophone cultural production and theoretical inquiry. In what context, and to what effect, do writers and artists draw upon multiple mediums of expression? What does the interweaving of forms afford them, and are these writers/artists, through their complex patterns of representation, striving to reach beyond common notions of mimesis? This panel will consider 20th- and 21st-century prose, poetry, the graphic novel, and hybrid genres.