Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation, and the Roots of Iconophobia

by Christopher Collins

Reading the Written Image is a study of the imagination as it is prompted by the verbal cues of literature. Since every literary image is also a mental image, a representation of an absent entity, Collins contends that imagination is a poiesis, a making-up, an act of play for both author and reader. The "willing suspension of disbelief," which Coleridge said "constitutes poetic faith," therefore empowers and directs the reader to construct...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0271028424
• ISBN13: 9780271028422
• Release Date: September 1991
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"