ABSTRACT
Ernest B. Gilman writes an elaborate review of a whole range of theories and critical stances, amongst which that of certain art historians denouncing the domination of language and its attempts to colonise the image. The relatively recent field of intermediality and the study of word/image relationships necessarily raised a number of theoretical questions that must be duly addressed. The fear that the image may be subordinated to language actually speaks of an act of defence to a deeply rooted anxiety. In terms of gender, the image finds itself aligned with femininity, whereas the text is masculine, the former being subdued to the latter. The chapter examines the conditions that allow for an intersemiotic operation, before describing some of the modalities of the transfer and concluding with the issues at stake concerning the literary text. One of the consequences of the early semiotic readings is to see the image as a text, even as a text to be read.
