The Literature-image Relationship Under The Perspective Of Representation

With the coming of image society, visual image rush into people’ daily life. TVprogram,photography and movie, which shocked us visual symbols of image, are fullof our life. They, exceeding traditional literature gradually, have a tremendousinfluence on the sense of sight and alter the style of life as well as mode of thinking.Traditional reading has been substituted by reading visual symbols of image, namelyimage reading. People are more inclined to visualized image reading and prefer thestrong visual impact which bring to us.Literature is the art of language, simultaneously the language has naturallybecome the most significant ideograph of literature and art. The relation betweenliterature and image should be described as the relation between language and image,and paper books are the main spread intermediary and existence of literature. With thebooming of a serials of mass media and visual culture, the way of existence ofliterature art changed tremendously. There is a fierce "confrontation" taken placebetween image symbol and character symbol of literature text.Discussing the relation between literature and image from the perspective ofrepresentation, we can conclude the relevance of them after comparing. Literature, asa linear symbol, can broaden the thinking of readers with its characteristics ofabstractive and thinking; whereas image, as a non-linear symbol, can bring readersvisual happiness with its characteristics of iconicity and intuition. Although there aredifferences exists between the two symbols, they can also complement each other,making the image and word as a correlative and interactional whole. From the view offigure representation of literature and image, as a culture that can be in words,literature describes the figure and constructs text by words；whereas image, as avisible culture, spreads the content by visual symbols. The representative function ofthese two ways of expression has its own merit, so they will express and complementeach other in image conversion. By reading tesxts, readers can get into a open-upspace that is filled with imagination and creativeness; while texts of image give acertain scene, imagination of readers are unnecessary. In a word, the special forms ofthe two texts can transform to each other by the combination of readers. It shows thatthe relation between literature and image is not independent and repellent to eachother, but interactive and interpenetrative.