On December 17, 6:30 PM, in room G307 at FLUP, Jan Baetens (Univ. Leuven) will present the seminar “Illustrating Proust, An Impossible Assignement?”

Abstract

Proust is a writer whose work seems to resist illustration: the very idea of adding pictures to his text is often seen as incompatible with the core message of his writing, which is about the literary transformation of the human experience. However, illustrations of Proust exist, not only outside the books (comics, movies, theatre, etc.), but also in books. In this lecture, we would like to sketch a brief history of these illustrations and analyse the cultural patterns that help understand how artists and designers solve the problem of the impossibility to put images on words.

Jan Baetens is professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium). An award-winning poet (in French), he has widely published on contemporary French poetry and the aesthetics of constrained writing. He has a special interest in word and image studies and frequently publishes on visual narrative in print (comics, photonovels, film photonovels, novelizations).