(Mitchell) undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. . . . The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read.--Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement [Mitchell] undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. . . . The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read.--Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Iconology 1(4) Part One: The Idea of Imagery 5(42) What Is an Image? 7(40) Part Two: Image versus Text Figures of the Difference 47(104) Pictures and Paragraphs Nelson Goodman and the Grammar of Difference 53(22) Nature and Convention Gombrich's Illusions 75(20) Space and Time Lessing's Laocoon and the Politics of Genre 95(21) Eye and Ear Edmund Burke and the Politics of Sensibility 116(35) Part Three: Image and Ideology 151(58) The Rhetoric of Iconoclasm Marxism, Ideology, and Fetishism 160(49) Bibliography 209(12) Index 221