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Talking Images: The Interface between Drawing and Writing book cover

1st Edition

Talking Images The Interface between Drawing and Writing

Edited By Silvia Ferrara, Mattia Cartolano, Ludovica Ottaviano Copyright 2025
    304 Pages 53 Color & 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This innovative collection offers a holistic portrait of the multimodal communication potential of images from the Upper Paleolithic times through to today, showcasing image-based creativity throughout the centuries. 

    The volume seeks to extend the boundaries of our understanding of what language and writing can do to show how language can be understood as part of broader codes and how images and figural objects can contribution to meaning-making in communication. The book is divided into four parts, each exploring a different dimension of the interplay between representation, symbolic meaning, and perception in the study of images and drawing on case studies from around the world. The first section looks at cognitive approaches to the earliest symbol-making while the second considers the interaction between images and writing in early scripts. The third section addresses images outside their boxes, showcasing how ancient communication devices can be reinterpreted. A final section features chapters reflecting on embodied semiotic approaches to the representation of images.   

    This book will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, archaeology, cognitive psychology, and linguistic and cultural anthropology.

    Contents

     

    List of Contributors

    List of Plates

    List of Figures

    Acknowledgements

     

    Introduction: Can Images Talk? (Silvia Ferrara and Ludovica Ottaviano)

     

    Part 1: The Earliest Images, Symbols, and Cognition

    1. Marks, Signs, Symbols: Behavioural Modernity and the Early Homo sapiens (Enza Elena Spinapolice)

    2. Between Nature and Culture: Interpreting Changes in Human Representations During the Early Neolithic in Northern Mesopotamia (Marion Benz and Joachim Bauer)

     

    Part 2: When Images Interact with Writing

    3. Images Hidden in Script: The Invention of Writing in Ancient Iran (Kathryn Kelley)

    4. Emblem Glyphs: Orthography and the Political World of Classic Maya Scribes (Mallory E. Matsumoto)

     

    Part 3. Images Outside their Boxes

    5. Europe’s Other Writing: ‘Ominous Hieroglyphics’ and Belated Ekphrasis in the 19th Century (Christopher Pinney)

    6. Aghori - The Voyage of an Anti-Hero: Comic Book Images and the Art of Storytelling (Roma Chatterji)

     

    Part 4: Representing Images through Lines, Bodies and Language

    7. Art from Calligraphy: Chinese Writing Turns into Pictorial Images, Performative Actions, Design Products, and Graffiti Works (Adriana Iezzi)

    8. Facial Scripts: The Semiotic Journey of Maori Tattoos from Colonial Gaze to   Cultural Revival (Massimo Leone)

    9. From Expressive Sign to Denotative Sign: On Some Semiotic Passages Connected to the Invention of Writing (Claudio Paolucci)

     

    Epilogue: Images Talking Through Time and Space (Mattia Cartolano)

     

    Index

     

     

     

    Biography

    Silvia Ferrara is Professor of Mycenaean Philology at the University of Bologna, Italy.

    Mattia Cartolano is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy.

    Ludovica Ottaviano is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy.

     

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