| Unit name | A Conversation? Artists and Writers in Britain and America c. 1789 - present |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HARTM0020 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Dr. Brockington |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of History of Art (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit focuses on the complex relationships that developed between art and literature, and between artists and writers in Britain and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the narrative painting of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to the typographical innovations of the Book Beautiful and the poetic experiments inspired by cubism and abstract expessionism, word and image have intersected, reinforcing one another, but also competing. The course emphasises the creative tension between friendship and rivalry, exchange and appropriation, the 'sister arts' and the drive toward aesthetic isolation. It examines successive theoretical attempts to reconcile or to differentiate between art forms, and it place these ideas in the context of the messier, but no less exhilarating, personal interactions that shaped artistic and literary practice in the period. Please note that the unit involves a large element of literary analysis. It is suitable for those who enjoy reading literature in English, and who feel confident with practices of 'close reading'.
Students will learn about the richness of the conversation between artists and writers in Britain during the period, and about possibilities and limitations of interdisciplinary research. They should develop a sense of historical development across the three centuries under discussion, and be able to combine theoretical argument with reference to particular texts, images and practitioners.
10 x 2 hour seminars
5000-word essay
James, Henry, The Art of Fiction [1884] in The House of Fiction: Essays on the Novel, ed. Leon Edel (London: Mercury Books, 1962).
Lessing, Gotthold, Laocoön: An Essay upon the Limits of Poetry and Painting [1766] (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
Mitchell, W.J.T., ‘Word and Image’, Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Schiff (Chicago & London: U. Chicago P., 2003).
Mitchell, W. J. T., Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, c1994).
Ruskin, John, ‘Definition of Greatness in Art’, Modern Painters vol. 1 [1843]. Various editions, including The Worksof John Ruskin, ed. Cook and Wedderburn (London: George Allen, 1903-1912), 3: 87-92.
Steiner, Wendy, The Colors of Rhetoric: Problems in the Relation between Modern Literature and Painting (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1982).
Woolf, Virginia, ‘Pictures’ [1925] in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, ed. Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1994), 4: 243-6.
