Chapter 1 examines the problem of postcolonial estrangement, via a little-known episode in 1966 in which the preeminent national painter of Pakistan was commissioned to illustrate Albert Camus’ 1942 novel L’Étranger (The Stranger). These “illustrations,” artistic projects in their own right, were commissioned by an artists’ book press, and printed in a limited run, most of the copies of which were distributed to members of the guild press and the artist’s friends and family. While Sadequain had some familiarity with the major works of European modernism via print publication, his primary literary and aesthetic bibliography draws from the Urdu and Persian traditions. The lithographs, curiously cosmopolitan, are shocks of color and modernist collage, filled with grinning devils and red-lipped sinners, the images facing opposite Camus’ ascetic rendering of Meursault’s spare and affectless criminal condition and his victim. As such, they may be the first rendering of Camus’ nameless Arab – murdered on the beach – by a postcolonial subject. This chapter, based on archival research of the artist’s book and the painter’s other Paris work, examines this complicated and multifaceted text itself, as well various etiologies of estrangement.

The chapter addresses: 1. Overview of the Embodiment Principle. 2. Theoretical Rationale for the Embodiment Principle. 3. Empirical Rationale for the Embodiment Principle. 4. Boundary Conditions for the Embodiment Principle. 5. Applications of the Embodiment Principle

The Introduction outlines the intermedial method of this book, which brings together Milton with nineteenth-century writers and artists who engage with each other’s work at the same time as reading Milton directly. It provides an overview of Milton’s place in the visual and material culture of the long nineteenth century. This includes the literary galleries of the late eighteenth century, the development of proto-cinematic technologies and stage spectacles, illustration on canvas and the page, and interventions in books such as extra-illustration and marginalia. The Introduction also addresses the various metaphors drawn from Milton’s writing that scholars have used to explain his influence, comparing him to a ghost, a troll, a father, even God. It then proposes the epic simile as a useful model for the way Milton is understood in this book: just as Milton’s similes describing Satan suggest, a powerful figure can be like many disparate things at the same time.

The early nineteenth-century literary revival of the Arthurian legends inaugurated a corresponding resurgence in the visual arts. New printings of historic romances and verse by contemporary poets, notably Alfred Tennyson, furnished artists with Arthurian subjects and stimulated popular demand for their work. Arthurian artworks proliferated everywhere from the Palace of Westminster to the walls of the Royal Academy to the pages of illustrated books. Under Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s leadership, the second generation of Pre-Raphaelites gave fresh forms to Arthurian narratives, imbuing them with melancholy and Romantic passion. In the latter half of the century, the trend spread from Great Britain to America and Canada, where artists introduced Arthurian figures into North American landscapes. In Europe, French, German and Belgian artists drew inspiration from Wagner’s Arthurian operas. The revival persisted into the 1920s, when post-war shifts in artistic and cultural values brought the long florescence of Arthurian art to a close.

Tennyson’s Idylls, so popular a subject of illustration in the Victorian era, have not been the subject of much illustration in the last hundred years – though a number of illustrated editions of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ have appeared in that period. Nevertheless, illustrations of the Idylls influenced a spate of illustrated editions, retellings or adaptations of Malory’s Morte, the book that inspired most of the Arthurian illustrations in the last century, and of other major works, especially of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

This chapter examines various ways in which Arthur and Arthurian legend have been visualised between 1500 and 1800; not confined to manuscripts, it offers a cross-medium account of the legend’s visual representation, including physical installations, engravings, antiquarian juvenilia, as well as architecture and applied art. It examines the ways in which these visualisations present their narratives and how the figures are defined. This chapter also explores how Arthurian figures are identified and located within history, notably by devices including heraldry and architecture, and how these devices are employed to afford various senses of the antique, status and significance.

This chapter examines the development of illuminated manuscripts in Late Antiquity, focusing on their origins, evolution and cultural significance. It argues that illumination was not merely decorative but played a navigational, didactic and symbolic role, aiding text comprehension while reinforcing religious and political authority. Tracing the transition from papyrus scrolls to the codex, the chapter emphasises how the Christian adoption of the codex format facilitated the rise of manuscript illumination. It documents how the earliest illustrated Christian manuscripts emerged in Egypt, influenced by pagan scroll traditions, magical texts and the Book of the Dead. These manuscripts incorporated symbolic elements such as the ankh cross and interlace designs, which later became defining features of Coptic and Byzantine carpet pages. The study then shifts focus to early biblical illustration, highlighting works such as the Vienna Genesis, Quedlinburg Itala and Rabbula Gospels, which reflect the growing role of visual storytelling in Christian texts. The chapter concludes by emphasising the imperial patronage of illuminated books, noting Constantine’s commissioning of grand scriptural manuscripts and the development of treasure bindings adorned with ivory and gold. Ultimately, the study demonstrates how manuscript illumination evolved as a medium of authority, devotion and intellectual transmission across Late Antiquity and the early medieval world.

What do you do with a linguistic variable once you’ve found one?

This chapter will provide a step-by-step procedure for setting up an analysis of a linguistic variable. It will detail the procedures for coding, how to illustrate the linguistic variable and how to test claims about one variant over another.

Abstract: This chapter examines 1870s children’s literature materially. It does this by emphasising, first, the children’s book as a material object and, second, the process of producing children’s literature within the material conditions of Victorian publishing. A discussion of the distinctive material attractions of the movable picturebook for children, such as three-dimensional pop-up pictures and manipulable mechanical figures, sets up the chapter’s focus on the value added by considering the material configuration of word and image in other books from the period. This facilitates a reassessment of well-known texts including Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Kate Greenaway’s Under the Window (1879), and Christina Rossetti’s Sing-Song (1874). Features such as the distribution of illustrations across pages, the variation of editions’ content, and illustrations changing from manuscript to print restore children’s classics as materially specific objects rather than timeless texts conveyed immaterially from the 1870s to the present

For a book that attempts to explain how to understand visuals in life sciences, it seems prudent to first explain what we mean by “visual,” even if it may seem quite a common word.

In everyday conversation, “visual” is often used as an adjective and means “relating to seeing or sight,” as in “visual impression” or “visual effect.” In the context of this book, “visual” is used similarly as an adjective, but in addition, and more often, it is used as a noun. As a noun, it refers to the variety of images used in life science communication. For example, photographs are a type of visual commonly used in life science communication, and so are drawings.

Illustrations are a visual staple in life science communication. Despite being commonplace, they are in many ways a blackbox. They mask the creative – and scientific – decisions that go into making them. They present an end product that says, as it were, “this is how you look through life to its essence.” The use of precise lines and explicit shapes helps to convey this scientific authority. In contemporary illustrations, pseudo-details such as colors and dimensions further prove that “this is what life looks like.”

Micrographs, like the little (pun intended) cousin of photographs, are considered by some as an objective portrayal of nature. Why, they are photographs of the microscopic world invisible to the naked human eye. As such, what you see is what you get, and what you get is nature unveiled.

Particularly because the microscopic world is invisible to us in everyday life, we find it even more urgent to behold that world. We assume that if and when we see, we will automatically understand. If and when we observe microorganisms in their smallest components, we will be able to “get” them and conquer them.

Contemporary life sciences are big data sciences. The human genome, for example, contains about three billion DNA base pairs and an estimated 20,000 protein-coding genes. Public health data, as another example, are endlessly enormous and encompass electronic medical records, health monitoring data, environmental data, and more. When it comes to analyzing and presenting these big data, interactive online visuals – maps, graphs, three-dimensional models, even computer games – have inherent advantages. They are dynamic and easily updated. They support user interaction and allow users to create displays that make sense to them. Being “hands-on” also makes these visual displays more interesting. As computer visualization technologies continue to advance, we are guaranteed to see faster, more fluid, more ingenious interactive displays.

As we have seen throughout this book, standalone visuals like photographs and illustrations are promising ways to communicate science to the public – and they carry their fair share of misconceptions and complications. These promises – as well as challenges – are multiplied in infographics.

The word “infographic” comes from the phrase “information graphic.” Originally, the term referred to the production of graphics for print media such as newspapers and magazines. Today it refers to a unique multimodal genre that combines data visualizations (i.e., graphs such as lines, pies, bars, and pictographs), illustrations (such as icons and drawings), photographs, and small amounts of text. When designed for online use, infographics can also have interactive components. For example, putting the mouse cursor somewhere on the infographic may reveal a small pop-up window with additional information. Some infographics are also animated: bars in a bar chart may grow, colors may change, or characters may move. This is often achieved by using animated GIF files that display a sequence of static images in a repeating loop, which creates the illusion of motion.

Graphs – such as line graphs or bar graphs – convey numerical data. They are commonly used in life science communication as well as other communication contexts, such as when conveying stock market data, crime statistics, or real estate trends. The prevalence of these graphs doesn’t mean, as some may assume, that they are always easy to understand. Depending on design choices, some graphs will be able to shed light on important numerical data for public understanding of science, while others are likely to confuse or leave readers with a heightened conviction that science is an inaccessible enterprise.