The "Hermeneutic Imperative" and Victorian Word Portraits

This article introduces the "word portrait," a subgenre of life writing often focused on depicting famous writers. These portraits emphasized visuality through a "hermeneutical" insistence on connecting visible bodily features with authors' creative productions. This subgenre frequently appeared in middlebrow periodicals of the mid-and late Victorian period. I argue that we can nuance our understanding of the relationship between highbrow intellectual tendencies and less culturally authorised critical practices by taking stock of the word portrait's operations and logic.