The “I” and the “Eye”: The Verbal and the Visual in Post-Renaissance Western Aesthetics
Author: Pragyan Rath
Date Of Publication: Jun 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2924-3
Isbn: 1-4438-2924-2
The paradigmatic moment of the opposition between the verbal and the visual arts may be seen in Lessing’s treatise on the Laocoön sculptural group, written in 1766; a moment that is identified within a historical framework of modern aesthetics that begins with Lessing, goes through Pater, and then culminates in Greenberg. The author delineates the opposition as a history of diffusions, displacements and idealist reparations of class division.

Dr Pragyan Rath is an Assistant Professor in the Business Ethics and Communications Group of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC). She has researched extensively in ekphrasis with related publications in the Journal of Contemporary Theory (vol. 28, 2008) and the Critical Enquiry (vol. 1.4, 2009); and related paper presentations in Word & Image (Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, 2007); Rethinking the Visual (Thrissur, Kerela, 2008); and On Aesthetics (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, 2008).

“In The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye,’ Pragyan Rath provides a perceptive analysis of the shifting dialectics of the verbal and visual arts ignited by Lessing’s Laocoön. Rath’s linking of word/image theories to political economy is fine-tuned, and it illuminates the under acknowledged role of intermedial aesthetics in the shaping of cultural attitudes, such as the privileging of mental over manual labor. This is a well-conceived and well executed scholarly work, which will be welcomed by intermedial scholars and cultural historians alike.”

—Kathleen Lundeen, Professor of English, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA

“Clearly argued and well grounded, this ambitious study is particularly impressive both for its scope and for its ability to coordinate what might otherwise have been seen as “purely” aesthetic issues with the social and political circumstances that they reflect, and that give them their cultural force. Its focus is on the question of identity [relating to] the intersection of visual and verbal representation, but this question is pursued along historical and philosophical lines that disclose the deeper issues at stake.”

—Ernest B. Gilman, Professor of English, NYU Department of English, USA

“Pragyan Rath’s erudite critical examination of the dialogue that exists in the arts, history, and society between poetry and painting, the verbal and the visual, and between labors of the mind and the body is a tour de force of cultural knowledge. The author brings forth into contemporary aesthetics and cultural studies the discourse developed in Lessing’s Laocoön: An Essay on the limits of Painting and Poetry (1776). Lessing’s argument favoring the superiority of poetry over painting is subjected to critical examination and brought into the aesthetic debates of the Twentieth Century as initiated in the writings of the art critic Clement Greenberg and others. Taking the thesis a step further, the author’s analysis extends the discourse on this topic to contemporary Marxist cultural theory as in the writings of Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton. This comprehensive study is a valuable contribution to contemporary aesthetics and critical theory.”

—Curtis L. Carter, Professor of Aesthetics, Marquette University, USA

“Dr Pragyan Rath’s work, The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye,’ which is a revised version of her doctoral dissertation done at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, is a historical exploration of the relationship between the verbal and visual art since the Enlightenment in Europe represented in its philosophical and aesthetic tension in Lessing’s work Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766), which inaugurated a long-drawn debate in the West between the social implications of this relationship based upon the hierarchization of aesthetic categories. By using Lessing’s valorization of the verbal over the visual as a take-off point Dr Rath has explored the intricate trajectory of this distinction to understand the nature of social ideologies that determined such dichotomies. She returns to the question of art as ‘Ut Pictura Poeisis’ celebrated in Horace to suggest the philosophical genesis of that tension. Through her readings of Walter Pater and Clement Greenberg, as representatives of the 19th and 20th centuries of art criticism respectively, she weaves her historical peregrination with critical references to Kant, Adorno, Benjamin, Peter Burger, W. J. T. Mitchell and many others. She tries to understand Lessing’s valorization of the verbal over the visual arts in terms of the 18th century’s privileging of the mind over senses. Through her thorough examination of the various art movements and criticism she tries to understand the reasons for the difficulty in maintaining such a distinction in the face of the ‘loss of cultural hierarchisation of a class in . . . mass commoditization.

“This is an excellent work and deserves publication as a book. I strongly recommend it for publication. You are welcome to use any portion of my comments for endorsement of the book.”

—Prafulla C. Kar, Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory, Baroda, Formerly Professor of English, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India

“This scholarly study examines the relative valuations made of poetry and painting from the late eighteenth century to the present. It combines aesthetic and social analysis which revolutionises our understanding of both. Pragyan Rath has done what few have achieved: re-written the history of art. A splendid work.”

—Prof. Gary Day, Department of English and Creative Writing, De Montfort University Leicester

“This is an ambitious project that explores some of the most difficult and enduring questions in modern aesthetics and political theory. Rath takes us on a journey that is very much alive to the special signature of an historical context and the way that context informs and cross-references all modes of production, including intellectual and art practices. With Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoön as her departure point, we learn how word and image, poetry and painting, the verbal and the visual have been compared and evaluated over several centuries, their differences hierarchised and explained as the ‘natural’ limitations of the art genres themselves. Rath contests these seemingly innocent classifications by illuminating the political prejudice that informs them. Not only is there a valorisation of intellectual work over physical work in these arguments, but an insistence that these categories should not be confused.

“Rath follows the shifting genealogy of this way of thinking into the modern avant-garde movement and discovers a sustained attempt to dehistoricise value judgements so that they appear as universal truths. However the irony here, and it is a difficult one to grasp, is that these arguments tend to endure because they morph over time. Rath’s persistence in explaining how continuity can be maintained through apparent discontinuity is cleverly managed, and the implications of her insights have broad analytical application. In sum, this is an erudite and provocative argument about the cross-fertilisation of historical, economic, political and philosophical forces in all forms of cultural production, especially those that pretend to creative isolation.”

—Vicki Kirby, Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology School of Social Sciences and International Studies, The University of New South Wales, Sydney

“I have read this fine manuscript and consider it an original and very smart contribution to studies in aesthetics and the intersection of the verbal and visual arts. I am deeply impressed with the depth of research and the acuity of insight that Professor Rath brings to this discussion. This will be an influential study that will surely be referenced by generations of future scholars. I expect that The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye’ will find a home in many research libraries and scholarly collections across the globe. I am happy to recommend it with great enthusiasm.”

—Donald E. Hall, Jackson Distinguished Professor of English, Chair of the Department of English, West Virginia University

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