The Oxbow. Semiotics of the Pictorial Text

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the pictorial work The Oxbow. The Connecticut River near Northampton (1836), by Thomas Cole. On the one hand, the analysis allows for the exemplification of established tools and methods of structural-derived semiotics for the study of figurative texts; on the other hand, it provides an opportunity to return to some of the theoretical assumptions on which the analysis itself is based, such as those related to the semiotic specificities of the “pictorial text,” and to the peculiarities of visual enunciation.