The Visual Arts, Pictorialism, And The Novel

What do we “see” when we read a novel? How do writers make us see it? Marianna Torgovnick maintains that it’s worthwhile to think about novels in terms of the visual arts—in part because so many important writers did. This book is a classic interdisciplinary study of how novels think in terms of pictures and make readers think that way too.

What do we “see” when we read a novel? How do writers make us see it? Marianna Torgovnick maintains that it’s worthwhile to think about novels in terms of the visual arts—in part because so many important writers did. With special attention to novels by Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry James, as well as to illustrated novels, this book uncovers how novels use the visual arts to generate meanings in some of the same ways that films do. It’s a classic interdisciplinary study of how novels think in terms of pictures and make readers think that way too.

Marianna Torgovnick is the author of acclaimed books that the New York Times has called “a kind of gift to her own culture”: GONE PRIMITIVE; PRIMITIVE PASSIONS; CROSSING OCEAN PARKWAY (an American Book Award winner); and THE WAR COMPLEX. Her classic books CLOSURE IN THE NOVEL and THE VISUAL ARTS...AND THE NOVEL are available as e-books in multiple formats; THE WAR COMPLEX is available as a Kindle. Look soon for her new book, a sequel to CROSSING OCEAN PARKWAY called PICNIC IN THE DARK: CLASSIC BOOKS, FAMILY RECIPES. A Professor of English and Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University, Marianna directs the Duke in NY Arts and Media Program.