Visual-Verbal Materiality

This article deals with the material turn in literary criticism at the level of the visual and spatial aspects and dimensions of the text. First, it analyzes the different tendencies and changes that helped increase our awareness to this often neglected form of textual materiality. Second, it examines what may be at stake when we read these visual and spatial elements in a more conscious way. Third, it presents the work of two French theoreticians, Jean Gérard Lapacherie and Anne-Marie Christin, whose work on visuality offers both interesting theoretical insights and useful methodological tools for a better understanding of the visual material turn.