Key Text: Visualisation in Popular Fiction 1860-1960

                 Stuart Sillars

                 1995

"What is the nature of the dual discourse that is produced by an illustrated text that truly unifies the two....How does it modify the response of the reader to the written word? Does it enable him or her to enter more fully into the creative fictive world, or does it present that world as more artifice? Does it amplify the concepts and structures of the words, or does it offer separate ones of its own, as a sort of visual commentary?"

This statement would be my ideal opening paragraph too! It highlights everything I wish to study on this subject. How does illustration change your perception of what you read? Does the visual interfere with the narrative 'visuals' or do they complement them? If the illustrations present a 'visual commentary' is this a bad thing?

I think what I must keep in mind is that each book, paragraph and illustration will be hugely different from the next. Therefore instead of looking at random examples I shall focus on those where the combination is successful (and of course examples where it is not) where the position, subject matter and craftsmanship are perfect, or close, and make case studies of these in the argument for the illustrated book. 

"...a novel which perhaps has more claim than any other of its age to be consider as a single discourse of word and image since both are the product of the same author."

I find this hugely interesting but I feel it has exactly the same problems as any other book illustration. Since the illustrator is also the author then those drawings may be exactly how she envisioned the characters, setting ect. whilst writing it. Of course we do not know this for sure, even with the illustrations the she may have wanted the text open to visual interpretation. I think it is impossible to present a drawing and say this is it. This is fact. Given a piece of text you will always connote and denote the signs embedded therein, even without a visual, it is engrained into our human psyche through culture, knowledge and experience. (Barthes)

What if the author is not a good enough illustrator to present their vision of the text? Are we left with the wrong impression? Is this a bad thing? Therefore should there be any illustrations at all? 

(Welcome to the never-ending circle of questions.)

"These circumstances make the nature and function of illustration in popular fiction of all kinds something which the serious critic may no longer ignore."

This statement may not be very important for my dissertation but I am genuinely surprised how accurate it is. The subject of the lack and decline of book illustration in adult fiction is something that appears to have been hugely over looked in the academic community. Even research in the area of the dual discourse of the visual and the written is hard to come by. It furthers my opinion that book illustration has fallen so far out of fashion and the social conciousness that it is no longer an issue to many people and furthers my want to know why. 

It makes me think that while my little blog wont change these facts perhaps my illustration work can!