Almost thirty years ago, W. J. T. Mitchell's "Iconology" helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media, now a central feature of the modern humanities. Along with his subsequent "Picture Theory" and "What Do Pictures Want?", Mitchell's no...

Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or e...

What precisely, W. J. T. Mitchell asks, are pictures (and theories of pictures) doing now, in the late twentieth century, when the power of the visual is said to be greater than ever before, and the "pictorial turn" supplants the "linguistic turn" in...

Acknowledgments Introduction: Iconology Part One: The Idea of Imagery 1. What Is an Image? Part Two: Image versus Text Figures of the Differences 2. Pictures and Paragraphs: Nelson Goodman and the Grammar of Differences 3. Nature and Convention: Go...

Introduction Howard Nemerov: On Poetry and Painting, With a Thought of Music Giulio Carlo Argan: Ideology and Iconology Joshua C. Taylor: Two Visual Excursions Elizabeth Abel: Redefining the Sister Arts: Baudelaire's Response to the Art of Delacroix...