This book is the record of a colloquium held at Churchill College, Cambridge. It pursues lines of discussion radiating out from the core theme of the power of the image (understood in its pictorial, iconic, sensory and verbal senses). Writers, scholars and artists are grouped in pairs representing the two language-cultures (English and French). Central topics covered include the manifold ways in which our readings of pictorial images old and contemporary can bridge cultures, language politics and the politics of culture, the limitless and instructive senses of the concept of the 'word', the...