A war of words and a feast of books

Abstract

Although this article deals with literature more than with visuality, its relevance for visual art is the opposition between hostility and what we call ‘beauty’. The core ‘object’ is the literary festival. There, people can learn about, and enjoy, the meanings of these two opposed attitudes in the semiotic practice of the use of language. This is what that use has in common with visual culture. There, the images that are shown also harbour the potential for hostility and beauty to clash. Traditions and innovations are central to both attitudes. The phrase ‘combatting forms’ makes clear how the two attitudes connect, in ‘inter-ship’, just as the two media – language and visuality – do. For, in literature too, images appear. Flaubert may well be the key example of that.