Contents: Images of Crisis

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University

[The original print edition was published in 1982 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. The WWW version of the first two chapters, about two-thirds of the text, was created during summer 1997 by Marisa Castagno of the University of Turin, Italy, with minor assistance from Landow. Landow created html version of the last two chapters.]

One. Images Situations, and Structures

• Into the Moment of Crisis
• Equivalent Structures
• John Martin and the Religious Sublime
• Pompeii Destroyed
• Bulwer-Lytton Punishes Pompeii
• Images of Crisis and Interarts Criticism
• Pre-Modern Images of Crisis; or Shipwrecked in the Sight of God
• The Shipwreck Image and Situation as Paradigm
• Static versus Kinetic Images of Crisis
• Crises of Christianity and Images of Crisis
• Ambiguous Images and Crisis
• Shipwrecks Literary, Literal, and Opaque

Two. Shipwrecks and Castaways

• A typology of shipwrecks and imperilled mariners
• The reality of shipwreck
• The destination disappears
• The pole-star vanishes
• Drifting on the waste ocean
• The mind a wandering bark
• William Falconer and the meaning of shipwreck
• Recognitions of the swimmer
• Shipwrecked and cast away in the sea of time
• Variations of Robinson Crusoe
• Political and social shipwrecks and castaways
• The advantages of the castaway

Three. Related Paradigms

• Related Paradigms: Introduction
• The Deluge transformed (1) : The Christrian Tradition, Biblical Interpretation, and Literature
• The Deluge transformed (2) : Romanticism and the Massacre of the Innocents
• Versions of Odysseus
• Rainbows: problematic images of problematic nature

Four. Iconology and Technique

• Paradigm, point of view, and narrative distance in verbal and visual arts
• Examples
  • Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror
  • Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution
  • Géricault's The Raft of the 'Medusa'
  • J.M.W.Turner's Slave Ship
• Some brief observations on paradigms and literary structure
• The Lessons of In Memoriam for Students of Imagery and iconology
• A brief conclusion on paradigms and literary structure

Last modified 28 December 2004