The making of the literary symbol: Taking note of Langer
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Robert E Innis
His research interests include aesthetics, semiotics and language theory, American philosophy, and philosophy of religion. His publications include
Karl Bühler: Semiotic Foundations of Language Theory (1982);Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology (1985);Consciousness and the Play of Signs (1994); andPragmatism and the Forms of Sense: Language, Perception, Technics (2002).
Abstract
Why, in light of the multiple approaches to literature that mark the various semiotic traditions and their complex intertwinings, would one turn to Susanne Langer's seemingly ‘marginal’ or idiosyncratic semiotic theory of art for conceptual resources? I argue that the conceptual core of the answer is found in Langer's notion of a ‘symbol of feeling,’ which is connected with her notion of ‘semblance,’ the imaginal power of art symbols to construct and present their own ‘primary illusions.’ Works of literature — of the poetic art — do not follow a discursive, but rather a presentational logic, giving us access to ‘virtual experience.’
About the author
His research interests include aesthetics, semiotics and language theory, American philosophy, and philosophy of religion. His publications include Karl Bühler: Semiotic Foundations of Language Theory (1982); Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology (1985); Consciousness and the Play of Signs (1994); and Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense: Language, Perception, Technics (2002).
© 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
