Abstract

The object of this research is the wordless novel – a genre at the confluence of literature and fine art that appeared in Europe in the late 1910s. Most of the time, the author of the narrative in wordless novel is the artist himself, and the compositions has no verbally foundation. Verbal function is performed by a visual component. The visual component is illustrative, but independent and performs verbal functions. Frans Masereel – the founder of the genre and originator of the term, and Lynd Ward – the artist who contributed to proliferation of the genre in the United States, are two most prominent figures with in the genre of wordless novel. For other artists it was more of an experiment, therefore namely the works of Masereel and Ward were selected for this analysis. The main conclusions are associated with the peculiarities of literary language of wordless novels, the specificity of which is substantiated by the need to solve the tasks of the opposite in its essence verbal language, without having any suitable tools. Images in the wordless novels are narrative, and exist to the fullest only within the framework of the series. Moreover, these images are processed through experience of the text. Although the very idea of the genre consists in carrying out narrative without using words, it does not distort the verbal component. It is rather being transformed, shifting to inner layers of the image, and acquiring an implicit character. The article analyzes the key visual tools used by the artists in creation of wordless novels.