https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1389044
https://doi.org/10.60056/Lit.2025.35.73–105
Bilyana Borisova
The article is dedicated to Gustave Doré’s Illustrated Bible and analyzes the relationship between image and biblical text in it. The connection between the word of the Holy Bible and the artist’s illustrations as secular art is sought and presented. The artist’s approach to the biblical text, the choice of scenes and plots for illustration, the author’s visual interpretations, the peculiarities of the technique and graphic solutions for the most impactful transmission of the inner energy of the biblical narrative from Creation to the New Jerusalem are discussed. The connection is made between the life of illustrations as secular art and their existence as engravings that make the biblical message visible in the printed text of the Bible as Holy Scripture materialized in a technically reproduced book.
Keywords: Bible, Gustave Doré, illustrations, engravings, visual interpretation, word, image
About the author: Bilyana Borisova is a phD of literature, a lecturer in the history of Bulgarian literature from the Liberation to the Second World War at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Author of articles and studies in the field of literary history and cultural history, connections and interactions between literature, philosophy and visual arts. He is the author of the books “Worlds and Readings” (2017), “Created to Speak” (2019); co-author of “Atlas of Bulgarian Literature 1878–1914” (2003), “Atlas of Bulgarian Literature 1915–1944” (2005), “Literature and Literature in Bulgaria 9th – 21st Century. Modernity” (2022) and “Literature and Literature in Bulgaria 9th – 21st Century” (2024); compiler and editor of “Critical Bibliography on the History of Bulgarian Literature from the Liberation to the First World War (1878–1914)” (2019), “Anthology of Bulgarian Poetic Modernism in Literary Periodicals 1892–1919” (2019), “Critical Textbook on the History of Bulgarian Literature between the Two World Wars (1919–1944)” (2021), “Literary Historicization. Histories of Bulgarian Literature from the 1880s and 1890s and the “Missing” Literature” (2022).
