How to steal an image: Poetics of a plot in literature and cinema

Abstract

In world literature of the 19th–20th centuries, as well as in cinema, a narrative plot is frequently employed that involves the abduction of visual representations — paintings, sculptures, etc. This article makes an attempt to highlight the recurrent structures that organize the story about the “theft of an image”, and also form or deform the visual image itself once introduced into a story. Three aspects of the plot are studied: narratological, semantic and rhetorical. The visual image functions as a narrative actant, not different in this from a valuable thing that one can take hold of; originating from a foreign or ancient culture, it acquires the status of a sacred object, enshrined in various envelopes and frames; it is involved in the play of figurative substitutions and associations — metaphorically or metonymically linked to one of the characters, included in closed or open image series. Those series of copies, corresponding to the general virtualization of visual images in modern digital civilization, call into question the original narrative intrigue, which implies the abduction of a unique original work. The article takes into consideration literary works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiel Hammett and Donna Tartt, movies directed by John Frankenheimer, William Wyler, John McTiernan, Giuseppe Tornatore, Eldar Riazanov, Otar Iosseliani, and others.