Introduction When one image can create a thousand pictures, why bother with illustrations in English lessons? One answer is that pictures are themselves rich sources of all kinds of imagery. Paintings and photographs stimulate all kinds of thoughts, talk and writing. Think of Keats, inspired to reflect on truth, beauty and more by the scenes on the side of a Greek urn - or consider Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, inspired by Breugel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. If you wish to explore that particular connection, visit the English Department site at Acadia University, where you will find a number of links for both the poet and the painter.

You may be interested in exploring the ways in which our thoughts and feelings are manipulated by images and our ways of seeing are affected by our preconceptions. John Berger's Ways of Seeing (Penguin: ISBN 0140135154) is a powerful introduction to this for older students, though his examples date back to the early 1970s - however there is a Washington University site which provides illustrations and further material, as well as discussing Berger's ideas in the age of the Internet. See the other sites page for more details.

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