This comparative, interdisciplinary study investigates the relationship between literature and the visual arts in France and Britain from 1750-1900. Through a close examination of the prose writings of Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, read against the background of contemporary philosophy, aesthetics and theories of language, <i>In the Mind’s Eye</i>proposes a new interpretation of the influence and rivalries underlying the development of art criticism as a genre during this period. The visual impulse – the desire to transcend the limitations of language and make the reader<i>see </i>– is located within the historical traditions of <i>ekphrasis, enargeia</i> and the<i>paragone</i>, while in each chapter, the individual author’s theories of the mind, memory and imagination provide a critical framework for his stylistic experiments.<i>In the Mind’s Eye </i>presents an in-depth analysis of the cultural, theoretical and aesthetic implications of artistic border crossings, and by contextualizing the movement toward visual/verbal hybridity in the fiction and criticism of Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, brings new perspectives to nineteenth-century studies in art and literature.