Preface
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His research interests include semiotics, theory of literature, psychology and psychoanalysis applied to literature, and nineteenth century European literature. His recent publications include
Literary Discourse. A Semiotic-Pragmatic Approach to Literature (2002);Litteratur og begær. Ti studier i dansk og norsk 1800-tals litteratur [Literature and desire. Studies of Danish and Norwegian literature of the nineteenth century] (2003);Ind i natten. Seks kapitler om Ibsens sidste skuespil [Into the night. Six chapters on Ibsen's last plays] (2004); andLitteratur og intersubjektivitet [Literature and Intersubjectivity].
Abstract
This collection of articles is, as the title of this special issue of Semiotica reveals, about the semiotics of literature. However, not every branch of literary semiotics is equally well represented in this issue. The reason is that it has been my intention to present a few approaches to literary semiotics, primarily that of Peircean semiotics and those of continental phenomenology and cognitive studies. Hence the structuralist tradition within literary semiotics is less well represented. It is certainly not absent, it has inspired and/or is discussed in several articles (e.g. Bundgaard, Bundgaard and Ostergaard, Davidsen, Grünbaum, Herman, Hogan, Ryan, and Stjernfelt and Zeuthen). So, even if it has been my ambition here to present different approaches, I would like to state that I find it old-fashioned and harmful to perpetuate sometimes confrontations between different semiotic ‘schools.’ And especially, with regard to the semiotics of literature, it would be foolish not to recognize the value and importance of the structuralist approach. After all, a linguistically based semiotics is well tuned to deal with important aspects of literature; and research by, for instance, Barthes, Genette, Greimas, Kristeva, Todorov, and onwards from the French tradition has contributed very substantially to the scholarly study of literature. It is further interesting that the present cognitive study of literature has affinities with both the structuralist and the Peircean tradition within semiotics.
About the author
His research interests include semiotics, theory of literature, psychology and psychoanalysis applied to literature, and nineteenth century European literature. His recent publications include Literary Discourse. A Semiotic-Pragmatic Approach to Literature (2002); Litteratur og begær. Ti studier i dansk og norsk 1800-tals litteratur [Literature and desire. Studies of Danish and Norwegian literature of the nineteenth century] (2003); Ind i natten. Seks kapitler om Ibsens sidste skuespil [Into the night. Six chapters on Ibsen's last plays] (2004); and Litteratur og intersubjektivitet [Literature and Intersubjectivity].
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- Diagramming narrative
- The new literary semiotics
- The contributions of Peirce's philosophical disciplines to literary studies
- Literary practice on the immediate horizon of the elaboration of semiotics: Peirce's meetings with a few great authors
- The making of the literary symbol: Taking note of Langer
- A semiotic definition of literary discourse
- Semiosis, art, and literature
- Story (first order predicate) logic
- Narrative self-reference in a literary comic: M.-A. Mathieu's L'Origine
- Recontextualizing character: Role-theoretic frameworks for narrative analysis
- Universal minds
- Reconsidering the unreliable narrator
- The cognitive import of the narrative schema
- The story turned upside down: Meaning effects linked to variations on narrative structure
- The role of Vorstellung in literary semantics
- Action between plot and discourse
- Perception already stylizes: On phenomenological semiotics
- Literary semiotics and cognitive semantics
- The representation of consciousness in language and fiction: A cognitive theory of enunciation
- Laughing brains: On the cognitive mechanisms and reproductive functions of mirth
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- Diagramming narrative
- The new literary semiotics
- The contributions of Peirce's philosophical disciplines to literary studies
- Literary practice on the immediate horizon of the elaboration of semiotics: Peirce's meetings with a few great authors
- The making of the literary symbol: Taking note of Langer
- A semiotic definition of literary discourse
- Semiosis, art, and literature
- Story (first order predicate) logic
- Narrative self-reference in a literary comic: M.-A. Mathieu's L'Origine
- Recontextualizing character: Role-theoretic frameworks for narrative analysis
- Universal minds
- Reconsidering the unreliable narrator
- The cognitive import of the narrative schema
- The story turned upside down: Meaning effects linked to variations on narrative structure
- The role of Vorstellung in literary semantics
- Action between plot and discourse
- Perception already stylizes: On phenomenological semiotics
- Literary semiotics and cognitive semantics
- The representation of consciousness in language and fiction: A cognitive theory of enunciation
- Laughing brains: On the cognitive mechanisms and reproductive functions of mirth
