Giving Light to Narrative. The Use of Images in Early Modern Learned Journals

This paper examines the visual and verbal cross-pollination between the Philosophical Transactions and the Journal des Sçavans with a specific focus on the role of the visual as an open form of communication, which overcame the linguistic barriers implied by journals published in vernacular languages, rather than Latin. Studying the illustrated articles published in the two journals in 1666 highlights the ways in which the authors viewed the images as providing clarity to their prose and how the images provided access to useful information that was otherwise invisible.