The Duplicity of the Word in Lynd Ward's Vertigo (1937)

Vertigo culminates the series of six woodcut novels Lynd Ward executed in the 1930s, and while considered his masterpiece, it has received scant critical attention. I consider the complex function of textual inscription within the visual narrative as well as the socio-historical and cultural contexts of this 'wordless' novel. None of Ward's other pictorial novels contains nearly as much diegetic language and none is so concerned about its rhetorical impact on the characters and the reader-viewer. The many billboards, notices and other textual markers in the engravings not only offer the reader interpretive guidance and direction but also supply ironic commentary on the characters' lives. The technique of reverse ekphrasis accentuates the climate of power as well as the historical resonance of the book and gives the silent characters--and the corporation--a complex voice. Keywords: Lynd Ward / Vertigo / textual inscription / reverse ekphrasis / social and cultural history of the 1930s
Vertigo (1937) culminates Lynd Ward's series of six woodcut novels, which begins with Gods' Man (1929) and moves through four other distinctive works that experiment with what he called 'pictorial [...]