Convivial Encounters: Word and Image in the Work of Rebecca West

Abstract

A passionate personal and intellectual encounter with literary and audiovisual texts and their authors lies at the heart of Rebecca West’s scholarly work. This article takes the author’s own encounter with Rebecca and the literary and filmic worlds to which she introduced her students as a starting point for considering Rebecca’s contributions to illuminating the encounters of word and image in our discipline. It focuses in particular on the intellectual and ethical value of the notion of conviviality, which it argues informs all of Rebecca’s scholarship. In particular, it addresses her important work on the creative encounter between the writer Gianni Celati and the photographer Luigi Ghirri, arguing that her writing on this “creative couple” is emblematic of her critical approach in general and in particular of her explorations of the points of contact between words and images.