Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (review)

Abstract

BOOK NOTES tinction, that between classical and vernacular tales incorporating commentary by the narrator, here receives too little treatment. The last chapter treats the eventual acceptance of fiction as a narrative category, in the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties (beginning in 1368). A "Postscript" summarizes recent trends in the criticism of Chinese literature and makes suggestions concerning its future. Readers who do not know the dates ofChinese dynasties should have them at hand when reading Lu's book. As a non-Sinologist, I find "Traditional Chinese Fiction Criticism," in How to Readthe Chinese Novel, edited by David L. Rolston, invaluable forbackground information. Andrew Plaks's "Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative," in Chinese Narrative, which he edited, is also useful. For the comparatist and the narratologist, the parallels between Western and Chinese commentary on fiction between about 400 and 1700 are astonishing. They include the marginalization of"fiction," the classification ofnarrative within philosophy (as exemplum or enthymeme), and the coalescence of short vernacular forms to constitute the novel. The defense of fiction as something different from truth or falsity appears at about the same time in the East and the West. For the Western literary history relevant to the comparison, William Nelson's Fact or Fiction: The Dilemma ofthe Renaissance Storyteller is the best short source; The Enduring Monument, by O. B. Hardison, Jr., shows that medieval difficulties in assigning a generic place to fiction were similar to those in China. Eugène Vinaver, in The Rise ofRomance, explains the "interlacing" techniques ofepisodic narratives much as Chinese critics pointed out the "brocade" and "sewing ofseams" in such works (see Rolston, 88-95). The diffusion ofBuddhist stories played a part in the development of fictional narrative similar to that performed in the West by the spread ofstories about saints. It is a pity that Lu did not make these comparisons; but he cannot be expected to know everything, and he has opened a path for further work on this subject. Wallace Martin University ofToledo W. J. T. MITCHELL. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1994. xv + 445 pp. W. J. T. Mitchell's Picture Theory is a big blockbuster ofa book packed with provocative ideas and brilliant analyses. It is the kind ofbook that is difficult to put down and even more difficult to review. The author ranges so widely that it is impossible to dojustice to the variety and the complexity ofhis arguments (which are conducted with enviable mastery), or even to list them all. That many of his observations are contentious will not surprise readers who are familiar with his earlier study Iconology (1986), which, like the present work, examines the relations between iconography, textuality, and ideology. Mitchell cares passionately about a number ofissues arising from their mutual interpénétration and argues forcefully for his own views while deftly exploring their theoretical implications. Ifthe volume has much to offer literary critics and art historians, comparatists will find it particularly compelling, especially those who work in the field ofliterature and art. Vol·. 20 (1996): 200 THE COMPAnATIST As much as anything, Picture Theory focuses on the nature and role of representation . Whereas Iconology asks what images are, how they differ from words, Mitchell explains, its sequel and companion volume "raises the same questions with regard to pictures, the concrete, representational objects in which images appear" (4). Although the book is resolutely theoretical throughout, it can also be viewed as a kind ofapplied iconology. In investigating the ontological status ofpictures, the author comes to the conclusion that pictures are inseparable from texts and vice versa. "All media are mixed media, and all representations are heterogenous," he asserts at the beginning: "there are no 'purely' visual or verbal arts" (5). To a considerable extent the remainder of the volume is devoted to demonstrating the validity ofthis surprising proposition. Refusing to succumb to what he regards as a specious dichotomy, Mitchell analyzes the dynamics ofthe "imagetext" in every conceivable configuration. Instead of constructing a theory of pictures, the first section reverses the traditional hierarchy between word and image, and considers various ways of picturing theory. By staging a confrontation between Panofsky and...