Many texts have given rise to illustrations in the course of their transmission, either literally supplemented by images or figures, or enriched by discourses suggesting parallels, proceeding by reformulation, or arguing by example. By juxtaposing images or other texts, illustration, in the literal or figurative sense, establishes a dialogue with a source text and questions its content. Its different form, its exteriority, and sometimes even the gap it creates, generate another semiotic layer, dependent on the text but, in its own way, distinct from it. By shifting our gaze, it is likely to affect the reading or reception of the text, as well as its meaning, or even to replace it.
This mechanism appears to some extent as a kind of repetition, always accompanied by a shift, as evidenced by the wide variety of ways in which it can be used, in both visual and textual forms. This is where intersemiotic or at least inter-stylistic shifts come into play. We can also speak of it as translation, since illustration often involves changes in linguistic register and semantic systems (text vs. image, statement vs. performance, for example), or transfers of meaning aimed at audiences for whom the original meaning of the text is presumed difficult or even inaccessible. Such a mechanism involves choices within the discourse, which it reconfigures and redirects; it can proceed by metaphor and by metonymy. Illustration often repeats and rephrases, though it also selects, synthesizes, and exemplifies. Moreover, these transfers from one form to another may themselves be accompanied by commentaries, such as colophons on a painting, or marginal notes highlighting the transformation that has taken place. The power of illustration is so strong that it may obscure the original text or blur the distinction between the two sides of this interrelation. Illustrations can have the power to mark out the text, to identify particular points in its continuum, and certain illustrations may have left traces in people’s memories even after they have disappeared, such was their power of suggestion. […]
More informations on the workshop’s website : https://commentillustrate.sciencesconf.org/
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