In the Mirror of Images. Bruges-la-Morte at the Origins of Photoliterature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2531-9876/22010Keywords:
Photoliterature, Intermediality, Iconotextuality, Bruges-la-Morte, DoubleAbstract
This essay examines the Belgian novel Bruges-la-Morte (Bruges-la-Morte, 1892), one of the earliest examples of literary phototext. Through a close reading of the iconographic section and the intermedial interactions, the analysis focuses on the structural and stylistic centrality of photography within the textual composition.
Particular attention will be devoted to the innovative rhetorical strategies of the images employed by the author to shape the reception of the novel. The aim of the essay is to analyse the equivalence between the reflection and duplication of the narrative and the non-illustrative relationship between verbal and visual elements, which gives rise to the semantic openings that thematise and amplify photography’s paradoxical analogical mediation between reality and representation.
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