The semantics of structure
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Martin Heusser
Abstract
One of the salient characteristics of Modernism, particularly of its early phases, is a new and different attitude towards the visual aspects of literary texts. Poets like E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams begin to exploit the visuality of their texts as an additional, important means of expression – often by means of iconicity. Both use mainly diagrammatic iconicity with isomorphic function but in different ways. Many of the texts concerned, particularly in the case of Cummings, are visually ostentatious, striking or simply strange but recalcitrant to interpretation. The poetics both of Cummings and of Williams have strong affinities with Romantic ideas about the function of literature, and both poets share a particular interest in short-circuiting the vicissitudes of linguistic meaning-making.
Abstract
One of the salient characteristics of Modernism, particularly of its early phases, is a new and different attitude towards the visual aspects of literary texts. Poets like E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams begin to exploit the visuality of their texts as an additional, important means of expression – often by means of iconicity. Both use mainly diagrammatic iconicity with isomorphic function but in different ways. Many of the texts concerned, particularly in the case of Cummings, are visually ostentatious, striking or simply strange but recalcitrant to interpretation. The poetics both of Cummings and of Williams have strong affinities with Romantic ideas about the function of literature, and both poets share a particular interest in short-circuiting the vicissitudes of linguistic meaning-making.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Iconicity and conceptualization
- Iconicity by blending 13
- The Bashō code 25
- Iconicity in gotoochi-kitii ‘localized Hello Kitty’ 43
- Grammar-internal mimicking and analogy 63
- To draw a bow 引 83
- Spatiotemporal aspects of iconicity 95
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Part II. Visual iconicity
- From diagrams to poetry 121
- The iconized letter 141
- The semantics of structure 159
- Visual iconicity in Latin poetry 173
- Shared and direct experiential iconicity in digital reading games 191
- Iconicity, intermediality, and interpersonal meanings in a Social Semiotic Space 211
- Model and icon 233
- Degrees of indetermination in intersemiotic translation 247
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Part III. Auditory iconicity
- Sound, image and fake realism 263
- Opera, oratorio, and iconic strategies 275
- On some iconic strategies in concept albums within the Italian singer-songwriter tradition 295
- Iconically expressible meanings in Proto-Indo-European roots and their reflexes in daughter branches 311
- The lexical iconicity hierarchy and its grammatical correlates 331
- Author index 351
- Subject index 355
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Iconicity and conceptualization
- Iconicity by blending 13
- The Bashō code 25
- Iconicity in gotoochi-kitii ‘localized Hello Kitty’ 43
- Grammar-internal mimicking and analogy 63
- To draw a bow 引 83
- Spatiotemporal aspects of iconicity 95
-
Part II. Visual iconicity
- From diagrams to poetry 121
- The iconized letter 141
- The semantics of structure 159
- Visual iconicity in Latin poetry 173
- Shared and direct experiential iconicity in digital reading games 191
- Iconicity, intermediality, and interpersonal meanings in a Social Semiotic Space 211
- Model and icon 233
- Degrees of indetermination in intersemiotic translation 247
-
Part III. Auditory iconicity
- Sound, image and fake realism 263
- Opera, oratorio, and iconic strategies 275
- On some iconic strategies in concept albums within the Italian singer-songwriter tradition 295
- Iconically expressible meanings in Proto-Indo-European roots and their reflexes in daughter branches 311
- The lexical iconicity hierarchy and its grammatical correlates 331
- Author index 351
- Subject index 355
