文本與觀看：近年來英語漢學界對視覺與文本關係之研究

Text and Visuality: Recent English-Language Scholarship on the Relationship Between Text, Viewing and Visuality in Pre-Modern China

本文整理、思考一九九○年至今英語世界中的漢學研究在文本與觀看關係問題上的主要成果。回顧過去二十年，可以看到，關注文本與觀看之間關係的不僅有來自於藝術史的學者，也有出身文學、歷史等方向的專家。這眾聲匯聚的景象無疑和文本與觀看的關係問題本身的跨學科性（interdisciplinarity）相關；同時，不同領域的學者以各自的方法，為「文本」、「觀看」、「視覺」、「視覺性」（visuality）等概念以及它們之間的錯綜關係呈現了來自不同視角的闡釋。本文重點關注問題有：文學出版物中牽涉到的文本觀看；文學文本與視覺藝術（例如，插圖）之關係；觀看與媒介；藝術、文本與觀看；印刷文化與物質文化視野下的文本與觀看；婦女研究和性別研究視野下的文本與觀看。最後，作為總結，本文將綜合回顧這些牽涉文本與觀看問題的研究的特點、共性，並商榷具有潛在研究價值的論題。

This essay reviews recent English-language scholarship on the intertwined issues of text, viewing and visuality in the field of Chinese Studies. Over the past two decades, the question of the relationship between text and visuality has attracted attention not only from the field of art history, but also from areas such as literature, history, and women’s and gender studies. Clearly, this picture of the convergence of voices from multiple disciplines has to do with the fact that the question of the relationship between text and visuality constitutes an ideal site for performing interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary inquiries. In other words, this question enables scholars from different disciplines to at once consider the concepts of “text,” “viewing,” “the visual” and “visuality” from their unique perspectives and converse and contend with each other. In its examination of this body of scholarship, this essay pays special attention to the following questions: text and viewing in relation to literature; literature and visual arts (e.g. book illustration); viewing and media; print culture and visuality; material culture and visuality; women, gender, and visuality; and the body and text. Finally, to conclude, I call attention to the potential risk of overemphasizing the visual by privileging seeing over the senses of hearing, touching, smelling and tasting, and raise questions for further consideration.