Iconotropism: Turning Toward Pictures

This is the first collection of word and image studies set within the perspective of the cognitive study of interpretation. The editor's claim that pictures and texts arise from the biological as well as the social interaction of individual artists, viewers, and readers with their environments is exemplified by the selection of original essays ranging from studies of Raphael, Titian, and Carracci, to an emblematic portrait by Georgia O'Keeffe, and to drawings retrieved from German concentration camps. This collection begins the work - surely to be expanded by art historians and theorists of the image, as interest in cognition and interpretation itself spreads - of investigating what can be learned about the interpretation of pictures within their historical contexts when an innate iconotropism, or hunger for what can be known from pictures, is assumed. Illustrated Ellen Spolsky is Professor of English and Director of the Lechter Institute for Literary Research at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.