How Pictures Tell Stories : Essays on Pictorial Narrativity

In the humanities, narratology has become a growing field of interest in recent decades. Quite frequently, storytelling has been associated with verbal discourses, but, as this book argues, other media, such as the visual arts, often tell stories too. While among art historians the narrative aspects of visual art have constituted a prevalent focus of interest, systematic and theoretical treatments of narrative and temporal imagery have remained largely absent. This book serves to bridge the gap between a language-oriented narratology and art history, examining some basic and regularly occurring narrative aspects of pictures from a cognitive and semiotic point of view. It will appeal to both scholars of narratology and undergraduate students.