The Image is what brings out concept; language is what manifests the Image. Nothing can equal Image in giving the fullness of concept, while nothing can equal languages in giving the fullness of Image. Language was born out of the Image, thus we seek in language in order to observe the Image. Image was born out of concept, thus we seek in Image in order to observe the concept. Image is to fully explore the realm of concept, while language that of Image. (p.3)

Wang Bi pointed out the interrelation of concept, Image and language, which transplanted the notion of image into the literature field, because literature cannot exist without the language no matter in its written or oral form. 

   Joseph Addison (2005) writes in his “On the Pleasure of the Imagination” that image is the most direct and fullest embodiment of imagination (p.411). Actually, the function of imagination is not only to make pleasure, but also to initiate literature. It reflects the poet’s inner emotion and the outside world where the poet lives. Joseph Addison pided the imagination into two categories: “proceed[s] from such objects as are before our eyes” and “flow[s] from the ideas of visible objects, when the objects are not actually before the eye, but are called up into our memories, or formed into agreeable visions of things that are either absent or fictitious” (as cited in Addison, 2005, p.411). We should place more emphasis on the second one, because it is closely related to the interpretation of literary work. Addison also pointed out that:

       We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight; but we have the power of retaining, altering and compounding those images, which we have once received, into all the varieties of picture and vision that are most agreeable to the imagination (p.411).