Literatura sin palabras: el caso de los libros-álbum sin texto

Picturebooks were considered the most original and relevant contribution made by children’s literature to canonical literature. This typology promotes creativity and experimentation, combining playfulness with artistic sophistication. For their part, wordless picturebooks, whose narrativity is found exclusively in the sequence of illustrations, bring forth questions as to whether they can be considered literature. Wordless picturebooks challenge traditional theoretical approaches and demand a complementary approach that encompasses all of the book’s elements. The scarce verbal component reinforces the meaning of the content and requires a more detailed reading of the illustrations. Using relevant examples, this paper aims to debate the inclusion of wordless picturebooks in the literary domain, through a reading that encompasses aesthetic criteria, with emphasis on narrativity.