Semiosis, art, and literature
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Barend van Heusden
His research interests include the semiotics of culture and cognition and the semiotics of art. His recent publications include ‘Cassirers Ariadnefaden — Anthropologie und Semiotik’ (2003); ‘A bandwidth model of semiotic evolution’ (2004); ‘Torn between two (autonomous) lovers: Mimesis and beauty in modern art’; and ‘Künstlerische Prägnanz’ (in press).
Abstract
The ‘state of literature’ in a visual culture is analyzed against the background of a theoretical semiotic framework based upon the distinction between three types of signs: one-place images, two-place symbols, and three-place structures. It is argued that literature is linguistic mimetic meta-representation. The semiotic perspective allows us to deal, in a productive way, with a number of key issues in literary theory (such as ‘literariness,’ literature versus entertainment, and literary diachrony). Moreover, a methodology for the study of literature and the arts in culture is proposed, consisting of three complementary approaches or ‘strategies’: the phenomenological, the hermeneutical, and the empirical.
About the author
His research interests include the semiotics of culture and cognition and the semiotics of art. His recent publications include ‘Cassirers Ariadnefaden — Anthropologie und Semiotik’ (2003); ‘A bandwidth model of semiotic evolution’ (2004); ‘Torn between two (autonomous) lovers: Mimesis and beauty in modern art’; and ‘Künstlerische Prägnanz’ (in press).
© 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
