Addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Editor's note: Laocoön and the languages of the arts; Part I. The Languages of the Arts: 1. On reading pictures: Poissin's letter on Manna Louis Marin; 2. The Mask of Time: work in progress Michael Tippett; 3. Marcelin Pleynet: Painting and Surrealism and Painting Paul Rogers and Stephen Bann; 4. The partridge without a pear tree: Pieter Bruegel the Elder as an illustrator of Ovid Ulrich Weisstein; 5. Public text and common reader Roger Scruton; 6. Technopaigneia, carmina figurata and Bilder-Reime: seventeenth-century figured poetry in a historical perspective Jeremy Adler; 7. Instrumental recitative: a study in morphology and context, 1700-1808 David Charlton; 8. Igor Stravinsky and T. S. Eliot: a comparison of their modernist poetics W. Bronzwaer; 9. Marinetti, Boccioni and electroacoustic poetry: Futurism and after Nicholas Zurbrugg; 10. Cinema, Symbolism and the Gesamthkunstwek Paul Coates; Part II. Translations: 1. Frank Wedekind: The Empress of Newfoundland: a spectacular mime in three acts Anthony Vivis and Julian Hilton; 2. Gennady Aigi: 'Kasimir Malevich' and other poems Peter France and Kasimir Malevich; 3. Fernando Pessoa: Notes for a dramatic poem on Faust Jonathan Griffin and Vieira da Silva; Books and periodicals received; Bibliography of literature and the visual arts 1945-1980 Ulrich Weisstein; Bibliography of comparative literature in Britain and Ireland, 1979 Glyn Tegai Hughes.