Phototextuality as a Phenomenon of Present-Day British Prose

Abstract

Like many other world literatures, the English literature of the last few decades has been marked by an intensive search for new narrative techniques, for innovative ways and means of arranging a plot and portraying characters. The search has resulted, among other things, into merging literature with visual arts like painting, film and photography. This phenomenon got the name of ekphrasis and has become a popular field of literary research lately.Suffice it to cast a glance at several of the novels published around the year 2000 to see that incorporation of photographic images into fiction allows writers to use new means of organizing literary texts, to employ nonconventional devices of structuring a plot and delineating personages as well as to pose various problems of aesthetic, ethical, ideological nature.We suggest to look briefly at seven novels published in the last three decades to see the various roles assigned to photography by their authors: Out of this World (1988) by Graham Swift, Ulverton (1992) by Adam Thorpe, Master Georgie