Abstract
The article Eye in/of the reflects the duality not only of contemporary visual-literary approaches, but also of the texts in this issue. On the one hand, we have vision directed into texture, a literary-artistic eye, which examines the wide domain between both specific literary texts and (audio) visual works (the interpretation of various intertextual or intersemiotic parallels, topoi, motifs, and the influence of visual methods and means on a text and vice versa), and literary criticism and visual studies, as described, for instance, by J.
W. T.
Mitchell in connection with the cultural-historical concept of "the Pictorial Turn". Visual studies emphasizing the problematics of the gaze and spectatorship contribute immensely to this way of thinking about literature and writing, aptly illustrated, for instance, by Mieke Bal, Mary Ann-Caws, and Kaja Silverman.
These theorists describe some kind of "visual reading" of literature, in which linguistic signification and textuality are considered equal to what J.-F. Lyotard calls "figural" processes, which frequently elude semiosis and representation.
On the other hand, "the eye of the text" evokes both the problematics of seeing and visibility and the concept of the text as a living organism that is more than just the object of scrutiny: it is an observer that watches us and our reading.