The reader's eye: visual imaging as reader response

Abstract

For centuries the visual imagination was regarded as vital to the reading to literature. Yet, even in their studies of a reader's transactions with a text, contemporary literary theorists and scholars dismiss the importance of mental imagery. When they define meaning as an abstract, language-like entity - as a mental process or linguistic signifier - the visual image can only be an inconsequential distraction or dangerous seduction. In this book, Esrock finds that such attitudes about the image are less well-founded than their advocates suppose. Esrock argues that foundational arguments from science and philosophy - which literary scholars employed against the privileging of the visual imagination - have lost much of their stature in recent years. Drawing on substantive research from various disciplines, she shows that the reader's visual imagery can have unique cognitive and affective consequences that heighten not only the experience of reading, but also the scholarly study of literature.