Academic Research Journal
Editors of the special volume on « Pictorial Writing »:
- Hédia Abdelkéfi (French Department)
- Mohamed Khabou (Arabic Department)
Call for Papers
The relation between painting and writing which originates in the millennium tradition of pictographic writing has undergone varied changes throughout history. The interaction of both the verbal and visual codes has incessantly nourished a myriad of literary and pictorial creations. In Western literature, it influenced many genres. With the advent of modernity, the dialogue between text and painting starts a new era whose continuity, already prosperous in the twentieth century, can only raise the question: Is there a system of pictorial writing?
In an attempt to answer such a question, we suggest clarifying the modalities of exchange between the visible and the readable via two lines of research:
1. Visualising the written text:
Being of a material and figurative nature, pictorial writing permanently stimulates plastic inventiveness. The visual reality of language is embodied in literature by practices such as displaying the grapheme or graphic experimentation of the calligram or the logogram. Vindicating Horace's UT picture poesis, pictorial stimulus has proved rich in poetry since the nineteenth century. Hence, it inspired Mallarmé with the poetic plasticity of a cast of die cannot abolish fortune. Since this act, founder of modernity, pictographic musing continued to be sharpened by the influence of the real over plastic arts. In the twentieth century, it impregnated the textual spatialisation of the new modern sensibility. From that angle, the objectives of the journal Academic Research' are to explore the impact of the visible on the readable in literature.
2. Writing as a painter:
The impact of painting on literature extends beyond object figuration. Many are the examples: painting is a topic of fiction (works of Zola), the protagonist is a painter (Elstir in Proust), fiction debates aesthetic matters (Masters and Slaves by Michon), the painting is transposed to writing (Gautier, Flaubert). These joint points between seeing and writing are certainly greatly interesting but the project of Academic Research wishes to privilege another dimension of the dialogue, that of painting as a model of writing. It is then important to question the creative impulses in literature that mimic painting in investing the literary language of style and the expressive resources in pictorial language. Visualising the written and writing as a painter are thus the two axes of thought which Academic Research invites researchers to consider while dealing with the topic pictorial writing through specific studies or general/theoretical analyses.
Guidelines for contributors:
Abstracts (title, a twenty line abstract, and short bio-data) are to be sent, no later than 30th June 2005 in attached word files to ecripictu@yahoo.fr or by surface mail to:
Mohamed Khabou (Arabic Department)
Hédia Abdelkafi (French Department)
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Po Box 553, Sfax 3000, Tunisia.
Deadline for the receipt of abstracts: 30th June 2005
Deadline for the notification of authors: 15th July 2005
Deadline for the receipt of final versions of papers: 30th September 2005
Expected date of publication of the special issue: December 2005