ABSTRACT
The status of affect as a medium in and of itself suspends the relevance, though not the presence, of the heterogeneity of visual imagery and literature. Instead, something like 'mood' becomes the 'language' through which the work speaks. The 'meta-language' would be the one not of literature itself but of the narrative theory deployed to analyse and understand literature. The reasoning would run somewhat as follows: so far, the camera functions as narrator; that is, the visual medium takes upon itself a role traditionally reserved for linguistic subjects, by whom narrative statements are uttered. The language of art criticism uses this term quite freely, in the same way as it deploys the terms 'visual language', 'idiom', and 'discourse'. Perhaps art can do what thought and its writing in criticism, theory, and philosophy cannot. Criticism serves not the artist but the relationship between the artwork and its audience. Criticism is an activity of mediation.
