What Images Really Tell Us: Visual Rhetoric in Art, Graphic Design, and Advertising

by Massimo Mariani

Overview

How do images hold and convey meaning? How do we understand them? What are they trying to say? How do they persuade and influence us? The author writes a complete account analyzing the meaning and construction of images, throughout history to present times, from the point of view of visual rhetoric. From advertising to graphic design, cinema and art, the book takes the reader on a journey of metaphors, metonymies, hyperboles and other rhetorical figures, which compose the visual language and the power of its meaning. By learning to identify them, and knowing examples of how they have been used, the reader will learn how to use and master the language of images.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788417656041
Publisher:	Hoaki Books
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Massimo Mariani, a graduate in painting at the Accademia di Brera, has exhibited in numerous galleries in Italy and abroad. He is a prolific author with many books published in Italian on such diverse topics as Freud and the subconscious, the representation of the feminine, detective stories and poetry.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Poetry and Image.

PART I

The Tale.

The Images.

A Look at Parts of Speech. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Direct objects. Rhetoric as Verbo-Visual Articulation

Catalogue of the Main Rhetorical Figures of Speech. Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Anastrophe. Syndeton. Hyperbole. Onomatopoeia. Pleonasm. Ekphrasis. Ellipsis. From collage to post-production an aside on surrealism and computers. Antiphrasis. Irony. An Election Entertainment. Canvassing for Votes. The Polling. Chairing the Member.

Recognition and Resemblance for Three Voices

Metalepsis: From the Verbal to the Visual. Verbal examples. Visual examples.

Moses and the Insurance Company.

The Character Gesture.

Charakteranalyse and the Iconology of Cesare Ripa

PART II

Rhetorical Articulation Applied to Narration

The Giallo and the Noir: Two Models of Rhetorical Narration. The plot of the giallo. The plot of the noir. Two points of view.

Verbo-Visual Models of Rhetorical Figures. Seeing the ending. Closed ending. Open ending. Circular ending. Finding ideas and forms for a narrative plot. The visual, the verbal and the secret explained by Ernest Hemingway. Examples of analogy.

The Emporium of Ideas. News, preferably about vicious crime. Conversations with friends or girlfriends, preferably nasty. Television, preferably trash. Character, preferably a bad one. The visible and hidden images of a plot.

The Rhetoric of the Character. The character is introduced. The nature and the tone of the character. Dramatis persona and character. Well-rounded character. Blurred character. Linear character. Contrasted character. Static character. Dynamic character.

The Rhetoric of Conflict. Contrast and conflict in noir. Three examples of noir (visual and verbal).

The Setting as a Collection of Elements Hosting the Action. The environment and the scene. A harmonic environment. A disharmonic environment. A harmonic and disharmonic environment together. The typified scene as opposed to the typical scene. The Cliffhanger. The Frame and the Dramatis Persona. The sublime vision. The disturbing vision.

Defectiveness as a Derogation from Icastic Representation. Metonymy: beyond the name. Antonomasia: against the name. Similitude: relative greatness. Antithesis: turning against. Reticence: omission, passing over in silence. Asyndeton: no connection. Metaphor: moving beyond, outside. Preterition: going beyond. Periphrasis: going around. Prosopopoeia: personification in excess. Hypotyposis: under effigy. Synecdoche: taking together. Exclamation: enunciating out loud. Hyperbole: simply exaggerating. Apostrophe: an action and its reversal. Oxymoron: the juxtaposition of opposites.

CONCLUSION.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.