Home Linguistics & Semiotics A burning world of war
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

A burning world of war

How iconicity works in constructing the fictional world view in A Farewell to Arms
  • Xinxin Zhao
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company
Search
Semblance and Signification
This chapter is in the book Semblance and Signification

Abstract

How do literary works access the iconic potential inherent in language to construct their fictional world view? A case study of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is presented to show that instead of its commonly accepted dual themes of love and war, the novel’s overriding theme is war – the universal and pervasive condition of human existence, itself cast as a war against the forces that conspire to make life shorter. The burning world of war is produced by the iconic force of literary language, from lexical choice to syntactic structure, from internal paragraph patterning to the patterning of paragraph sequences, from chapter level to the overarching narrative structure itself. Through quantitative and sequential iconic means, the abstract theme is made accessible, and the formless fictional world is given shape.

Abstract

How do literary works access the iconic potential inherent in language to construct their fictional world view? A case study of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is presented to show that instead of its commonly accepted dual themes of love and war, the novel’s overriding theme is war – the universal and pervasive condition of human existence, itself cast as a war against the forces that conspire to make life shorter. The burning world of war is produced by the iconic force of literary language, from lexical choice to syntactic structure, from internal paragraph patterning to the patterning of paragraph sequences, from chapter level to the overarching narrative structure itself. Through quantitative and sequential iconic means, the abstract theme is made accessible, and the formless fictional world is given shape.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface and acknowledgements ix
  4. Introduction xi
  5. Part I. Word forms, word formation, and meaning
  6. Toward a phonosemantic definition of iconic words 3
  7. Iconic thinking and the contact-induced transfer of linguistic material 19
  8. Ezra Pound among the Mawu 39
  9. Cognitive iconic grounding of reduplication in language 55
  10. Imagic iconicity in the Chinese language 83
  11. Words in the mirror 101
  12. Part II. General theoretical approaches
  13. Un mélange genevois 135
  14. How to put art and brain together 149
  15. Image, diagram, and metaphor 157
  16. Part III. Narrative grammatical structures
  17. The farmers sowed seeds and hopes 175
  18. Non-iconic chronology in English narrative texts 191
  19. A burning world of war 211
  20. Part IV. Cognitive poetics
  21. Aesthetic qualities as structural resemblance 233
  22. Mental space mapping in classical Chinese poetry 251
  23. Iconicity in conceptual blending 269
  24. Part V. Acoustic and visual iconicity
  25. Thematized iconicity and iconic devices in the modern novel 291
  26. Iconicity and intermediality in Charles Simic’s Dime-Store Alchemy 313
  27. Words, like shells, are signs as well as things 327
  28. Unveiling creative subplots through the non-traditional application of diagrammatic iconicity 343
  29. Part VI. Intermedial iconicity
  30. The iconic indexicality of photography 355
  31. Unbinding the text 369
  32. Argumentative, iconic, and indexical structures in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin 389
  33. John Irving’s A Widow for One Year and Tod Williams’ The Door in the Floor as ‘(mult-)i-conic’ works of art 405
  34. Author index 423
  35. Subject index 425
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.10.12xin

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface and acknowledgements ix
  4. Introduction xi
  5. Part I. Word forms, word formation, and meaning
  6. Toward a phonosemantic definition of iconic words 3
  7. Iconic thinking and the contact-induced transfer of linguistic material 19
  8. Ezra Pound among the Mawu 39
  9. Cognitive iconic grounding of reduplication in language 55
  10. Imagic iconicity in the Chinese language 83
  11. Words in the mirror 101
  12. Part II. General theoretical approaches
  13. Un mélange genevois 135
  14. How to put art and brain together 149
  15. Image, diagram, and metaphor 157
  16. Part III. Narrative grammatical structures
  17. The farmers sowed seeds and hopes 175
  18. Non-iconic chronology in English narrative texts 191
  19. A burning world of war 211
  20. Part IV. Cognitive poetics
  21. Aesthetic qualities as structural resemblance 233
  22. Mental space mapping in classical Chinese poetry 251
  23. Iconicity in conceptual blending 269
  24. Part V. Acoustic and visual iconicity
  25. Thematized iconicity and iconic devices in the modern novel 291
  26. Iconicity and intermediality in Charles Simic’s Dime-Store Alchemy 313
  27. Words, like shells, are signs as well as things 327
  28. Unveiling creative subplots through the non-traditional application of diagrammatic iconicity 343
  29. Part VI. Intermedial iconicity
  30. The iconic indexicality of photography 355
  31. Unbinding the text 369
  32. Argumentative, iconic, and indexical structures in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin 389
  33. John Irving’s A Widow for One Year and Tod Williams’ The Door in the Floor as ‘(mult-)i-conic’ works of art 405
  34. Author index 423
  35. Subject index 425
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 28.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/ill.10.12xin/html
Scroll to top button