The more theoretical aspects of my Tolkien visual research often involve some form of enquiry into the nature of images. One of the most useful visual aids to this subject is art historian and theorist W. J. T. Mitchell's "Family Tree of Images". Featured in his 1984 essay What Is an Image?, Mitchell's tree elegantly conjures, in a simple graphic, the sheer diversity of that phenomena which we refer to as imagery.[1]

Mitchell refers to the five branches of his tree as representative of a "far-flung family which has migrated in time and space and undergone profound mutations in the process". He nuances his model further, finding within each branch "a type of imagery that is central to the discourse of some intellectual discipline"[2].

For instance, he writes:

…mental imagery belongs to psychology and epistemology; optical imagery to physics; graphic, sculptural, and architectural imagery to the art historian; verbal imagery to the literary critic; perceptual images occupy a kind of border region where physiologists, neurologists, psychologists, art historians, and students of optics find themselves collaborating with philosophers and literary critics.[3]

Adding this new information to the tree, we might get something like this:

Finally, as with any family tree, there are one or two strange characters floating about in there; my personal favourites being "Species" and Fantasmata. What do these signify? Well, to put them into Tolkienian terms, imagine you are Gollum. Species is the sensation you perceive when you sit in the dark in your cave beneath the Misty Mountains and gaze upon the Precious, glittering in your palm. Fantasmata is the sensation you perceive when you try to recapture that beautiful moment after the Precious is gone, stolen by Baggins.

Illustration by Igor Oleinikov (2000)

Notes:

[1] W.J.T. Mitchell, "What Is an Image?," New Literary History 15, no.3 (1984): 504-507.

[2] Ibid., 505.

[3] Ibid., 505.