Spenser and Literary Pictorialism

Focusing, framing, scanning—the language of film—and Gombrich’s studies in the psychology of perception are used by John Bender to isolate pictorial effects and devices in literature. The theory that he proposes, grounded in his analysis of Spenser, “the painter of poets,” discriminates between the descriptive and the pictorial in poetry.

Originally published in 1972.

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