Pathonomica: Aby Warburg and the Philology of Images

This article aims to develop a philological approach to Aby Warburg's work by propounding a theory that, defined as Pathonomica, allows of taking a step from Iconology toward Literary Hermeneutics, bringing closer the semiotic relationship between space and time arts. A particular attention is given to Warburg's "Pathos Formula" and his principles of orientation, repetition, and distance, all of them defined as linguistic devices, as well as to the orality of interjections, which are comparable to the engrams produced by the emotive experience of images. The propose is twofold: on the one hand, and following a line already drawn by Georges Didi-Huberman, we attempt to demonstrate the fruitful opening of hermeneutical possibilities of Warburg's ideas about the liaison between life and word that holds the image; and, on the other hand, to point to a new interpretative way that may constitute a principle to further research into the expression of emotions in literary texts.