Visuality and reading. Psychological and perceptive dynamics of reading environments (from the printed page to the visual hypertext)

Abstract

This essay investigates the psychological and perceptive view of reading as a visual fact and looks at its operations in different environments: from the traditional printed page to the more recent electronic page of the e-book, with particular attention reserved to the relationship between "word" (the linguistic aspects covered by the alphabetical vision) and "image" (image of the word and image with the word - visual hypertext integrated with verbal texts in e-book). In the light of the studies of the Psychology of perception, Neurophysiology and Phenomenology, the experience of reading is a function that transcends those value systems tending to oppose the categories of verbal and visual, intellect and intuition, logos and disorder. But literature shows even better the inviolability of belonging of word and image, and how the thinking in images consists in building a bridge between the visible trace and the invisible thing.