The module teaches students how to approach illustrated texts, making them aware of the complexity of the relationship between word and image, and giving them an understanding of the history of the illustrated book from the late eighteenth century to the present.

discuss illustrated texts in terms of both form and content, and relate them to their modes and periods of production. They will be able to analyse illustrated material and demonstrate an understanding of how the interaction between word and image generates textual and pictorial meanings.

Timetabled sessions includelectures and discussion sessions where students may have the opportunity to make presentations and/or lead discussion. Lectures are usually supplemented with images on PowerPoint or slides.

There will be a two-hour weekly lecture in the semester supported by a weekly seminar. The lectures, which will include small group discussion and support, aim to provide key knowledge about and critical perspectives on all the illustrated texts on the module; the seminars provide the opportunity for close analysis of individual illustrations and an examination of the original material.

The particular skills of the module involve reading and understanding how illustrated texts make their meanings in the conjunction of word and image. This requires close reading skills, an historical awareness, and knowledge of the different ways in which words and pictures signify. Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information, a critical awareness of how words and images operate independently and together, and participation in group-based discussion involving negotiating ideas and producing clear, informed arguments.

The module is assessed by two pieces of written work. The first essay, to be handed in mid-semester allows students to produce a close critical analysis of an illustration. The second essay, to be submitted at the end of the module, allows students to discuss the wider contexts of the illustrated material.

The module is assessed according to the Marking Criteria set out in the English Literature Course Guide.There are otherwise no academic or competence standards which limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for students with disabilities.

The main readings for this module are the set texts and material collected in a printed course reader.Students should contact the module leader as early as possible if they will require readings in an alternative format.

Syllabus Content

The politics of illustration: relations between word and image

Illustrative techniques: engraving, etching, photography

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Pre-Raphaelite illustration

The 1890s and beyond: William Morris, The Kelmscott Chaucer; Wilde and Beardsley, Salomé

Theories of illustration

Twentieth-century

Set Texts

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair ed. John Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983)

William Morris, Ornamentation and Illustrations from The Kelmscott Chaucer (New York: Dover, 1973)

Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde, Salomé (New York: Dover, 1967)

Indicative Reading

Gerard Curtis, Visual Words: Art and the Material Book in Victorian England (Aldershot, 2002)

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, The Artist as Critic: Bitextuality in Fin-de-Siecle Illustrated Books (Aldershot, 1995)

B.E. Maidment, Reading Popular Prints 1790-1870 (Manchester, 1996)

J. Hillis Miller, Illustration (London, 1992)

W.J.T Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago, 1986)

Peter Wagner, Reading Iconotexts: from Swift to the French Revolution (London, 1995)