The new literary semiotics
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Harri Veivo
His research interests include theory of semiotics, semiotics of literature, French literature, and semiotics of space. His publications include
The Written Space: Semiotic Analysis of the Representation of Space and its Rhetorical Functions in Literature (2001); ‘Modelling, theorizing, and interpretation in cognitive literary studies’ (with T. Knuuttila, 2005); andCognition and Literary Interpretation in Practice (edited with B. Pettersson and M. Polvinen, 2005).
Abstract
This article argues that for the past ten or fifteen years literary semiotics has been in a new phase of development. The adoption of Charles Peirce's pragmatic semiotics as the frame theory for research on literary semiosis has opened up new questions and topics for analysis and facilitated a return to essential concerns neglected by the earlier approaches. Three lines of interrogation emerge as central from work done to date: analysis of language-world relationship, imaginative reading, and interpretation as dialogic production of shared knowledge. The article reviews the main discussions on these topics, also relating the pragmatic approach to competing paradigms in literary studies.
About the author
His research interests include theory of semiotics, semiotics of literature, French literature, and semiotics of space. His publications include The Written Space: Semiotic Analysis of the Representation of Space and its Rhetorical Functions in Literature (2001); ‘Modelling, theorizing, and interpretation in cognitive literary studies’ (with T. Knuuttila, 2005); and Cognition and Literary Interpretation in Practice (edited with B. Pettersson and M. Polvinen, 2005).
© 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
