The Image in the Text: Intermediality, Illustration, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature

FAIN: FT-249063-16

Christopher J. Lukasik
Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN 47907-2040)

An book-length study of the relationship between illustration and text in American literature.

The Image in the Text examines the spectacular growth of illustration within American literary culture in the fifty years running from 1825—when steel-plate replaces copper-plate engraving and facilitates the rise of the literary annual in the United States—to 1875—when the photographic half-tone will emerge and once again transform how images appear in print. My project expands our sense of nineteenth-century American literature to embrace not only the full range of print media in which literature was published—illustrated novels, literary annuals, illustrated magazines, and pictorial weeklies—but, more broadly, to include the images that were often so vital to their circulation and consumption. Upon its completion, The Image in the Text will be the first cultural history of illustration that synthesizes literary, book, and art history with theoretical work from visual and media studies.