Many texts have given rise to illustrations in the course of their transmission, either literally supplemented by images or figures, or enriched by discourses suggesting parallels, proceeding by reformulation, or arguing by example. By juxtaposing images or other texts, illustration, in the literal or figurative sense, establishes a dialogue with a source text and questions its content. Its different form, its exteriority, and sometimes even the gap it creates, generate another semiotic layer, dependent on the text but, in its own way, distinct from it. By shifting our gaze, it is likely to affect the reading or reception of the text, as well as its meaning, or even to replace it.
This mechanism appears to some extent as a kind of repetition, always accompanied by a shift, as evidenced by the wide variety of ways in which it can be used, in both visual and textual forms. This is where intersemiotic or at least inter-stylistic shifts come into play. We can also speak of it as translation, since illustration often involves changes in linguistic register and semantic systems (text vs. image, statement vs. performance, for example), or transfers of meaning aimed at audiences for whom the original meaning of the text is presumed difficult or even inaccessible. Such a mechanism involves choices within the discourse, which it reconfigures and redirects; it can proceed by metaphor and by metonymy. Illustration often repeats and rephrases, though it also selects, synthesizes, and exemplifies. Moreover, these transfers from one form to another may themselves be accompanied by commentaries, such as colophons on a painting, or marginal notes highlighting the transformation that has taken place. The power of illustration is so strong that it may obscure the original text or blur the distinction between the two sides of this interrelation. Illustrations can have the power to mark out the text, to identify particular points in its continuum, and certain illustrations may have left traces in people’s memories even after they have disappeared, such was their power of suggestion.
Illustration has many functions. It can be said to be ornamental, complementary, explanatory, contextual, or aesthetic. Illustration seems to offer access to the text or to shed light thereupon. However, despite this often explicit approach to opening the meaning of the text, the link between illustration and source text may be based on a host of implicit intentions. As a paratext—or as a pretext, in its relationship to the text—illustration is rather a factor of complexity requiring, in turn, its own interpretation. This demands a cautious approach, cognizant of different strata in the fields of philology, the history of texts, and the history and technique of images.
The many forms of illustration, taken in all senses of the term, are an integral part of the technical arsenal of commentarial practices and, through them, of the dissemination of knowledge. For this workshop, we are inviting contributions that present case studies or research pertaining to Chinese textual history from Antiquity to the modern period. Our theoretical interest is in the notion of commentary. For this reason, it is important not to separate illustration in its proper, graphic sense from that in the more virtual sense of exemplification, or of a discursive act that establishes some form of rupture (e.g., the change of linguistic register, or the transition between prose and verse). One of the questions we would like to raise is whether we might question the relevance of equating illustration with representation, and, if so, how these notions may differ. This call is as open to both historians of text—of literary and historical genres along with critical traditions—and historians of art, since its foremost aim is to consider illustration and images in their relationship to text, i.e. in the way they orientate or reorientate it.
Appropriate themes for proposals include:
- the forms and aesthetics of illustration
- the practice of illustrated editions
- illustrators and their techniques and status
- theoretical and semiotic approaches (functions, methods and approaches to illustration, reformulation and example)
- the connections between illustrated text and illustration
- illustration in the transfer of knowledge and the diversification of audiences
- illustration understood as a form of intersemiotic or intralingual translation
- illustration and levels of language (classical, vernacular, refined or vulgar styles, prose and verse, etc.) or culture
- illustration, contextualization and exemplification
- illustration and literary, textual, or pictorial creation
- the boundaries between illustration and source text
- lost illustrations
- illustration as a game
The workshop is open to all types of texts and approaches, covering all periods of Chinese history.
Participants will be selected based on their submission of an abstract (Spring 2024).
Prior to the workshop, selected participants will submit a full-length paper or a well-developed draft, which will be shared with the other participants (Autumn 2024).
Following the workshop, selected papers will be published in an edited volume.
