La asignatura está estructurada según cinco bloques de contenidos, que incluyen aspectos generales y teóricos, además de las obras literarias y artísticas concretas que serán estudiadas.
1) Word and image: the intersection between literature and the visual arts. The visual image in literature and art. Influence and transference. Literary allegory and visual allegory. Artistic and literary movements in parallel: the expression of ethic and aesthetic values. Visual representations of the characters in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
2) Ekphrasis: literary texts inspired by other art forms. The concept of ekphrasis from a theoretical perspective. Classical notions versus modern views. Analysis of specific texts (poetry and prose). John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
3) Ut pictura poesis: connections between poetry and painting.Poems about paintings: “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden and “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams, inspired by Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Landscape with the Fall ofIcarus. Paintings about poems: Alfred Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott and its representations by William Holman Hunt, John William Waterhouse, and Elizabeth Siddal. Painter and poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin" and “Mary’s Girlhood (For a Picture)”.
4) Writing and book illustration.Self-illustrated works by William Blake. The editorial control of Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll over their illustrators.
5) Methodological approaches to teaching literature in relation to the visual arts: from theory to practice. Handling verbal and visual materials. Resources and activities. Developing reader and viewer responses: comprehension and critical skills.
