Image Narrative: The Visual Orientation Of Contemporary Culture

Narrative is a fundamental social behavior throughout human history. Traditionally, it is mainly based on language (words spoken or written). Today, though, narrative modes depend more and more on visual images. Since the mid-1960s, human societies have been witnessing increasingly sophisticated visual images — photographs, films, television, comic strips, the Internet, and other types of multi-media. As a result, pictorial narrative (narrative through images) has gradually penetrated into almost every social arena and even come to play a major role in contemporary culture.Casting impacts on a variety of fields — politics, education, economy and people's daily life as well — image narrative, as a way of communication, has drawn attention of scholars and researchers. This thesis, therefore, tries to answer such questions as these: How should image narrative be defined? How shall we categorize and interpret images? What roles does image narrative play in our culture? How does it...