The idea that illustrations undermine intellectual pursuits can be traced throughout the ninetieth century, especially in English Romanticism. We find the first explicit occurrence of this idea in William Wordsworth’s sonnet “Illustrated Books and Newspapers” from 1846:
Discourse was deemed Man’s noblest attribute, And written words the glory of his hand; Then followed Printing with enlarged command For thought–dominion vast and absolute For spreading truth, and making love expand. Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit The taste of this once-intellectual Land. A backward movement surely have we here, From manhood,–back to childhood; for the age– Back towards caverned Life’s first rude career. Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page! Must eyes be all-in-all, the tongue and ear Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage! (Wordsworth)
The sonnet traces a line of intellectual progress tied to the use of language (discourse, written words) that is challenged by a “dumb Art” (illustration). Illustration, then, supposes a backward movement, halting the course of this intellectual progress: through illustration, (adult) readers regress to children.
This argument still appears prominently in the second half of the twentieth century, for example, in Theodor W. Adorno’s Minima Moralia (1951). In the chapter “Bilderbuch ohne Bilder,” Adorno writes about illustration (albeit with no specific focus on illustration in literary works):
“Was einmal Geist hieß wird von Illustrationen abgelöst. Nicht bloß, daß die Menschen sich nicht mehr vorzustellen vermögen, was ihnen nicht abgekürzt gezeigt und eingedrillt wird. Sogar der Witz, in dem einmal die Freiheit des Geistes mit den Fakten zusammenstieß und diese explodieren machte, ist an die Illustration übergegangen.”
(Adorno 160)
Works Cited
Wordsworth, William. “Illustrated Books and Newspapers” [1846]. Last Poems, 1821-1850. Edited by Jared Curtis, Cornel UP, 1999.
Adorno, T. W. Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Suhrkamp, 2001 [1951].
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