These days the written word is coming under a great deal of pressure from visual media. Increasingly we feel we have to refer to films "which everyone knows" or contemporary mass culture in order to explain theories and discuss the pattern of a text. Photography, television and films have taken over a large share of information exchange, education and entertainment. The flow of images reaches us via the ever-changing forms of new technologies and the "medium is the message." But visual media are not merely part of our reality: we talk of a "world wiew" and this reflects the fact that the public space, and therefore our culture, is becoming more visual by the day. This anthology considers literature and visual culture form a number of different perspectives. It provides valuable assistance in the quest for a new understanding of the interplay and fusion of image and text in the modern era, in new yet at the same time well-established forms.