On a special case of meaning-emergence in the literary text: The function of semantic formations with ‘contradictory’ sense-orientation in the process of poetic meaning-evolution
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Katalin Kroó
Abstract
In this article, the emergence and evolution of poetic meaning in the literary text is examined in the theoretical problem context of a special semantic construct. Its peculiarity lies in offering a double reading based on the internal contradiction of activating two opposed sense-orientations. Due to this poetic feature, this kind of meaning-formation can easily assume the function of semantic mediation between two crucial meaning units. When poetically placed into interrelation with other levels of the text structure, the mediatory function of this formation is realized as a meaning shift. Thus, the mediatory semantic construct can be construed as a germ for the emergence and evolution of new meaning, and it plays a crucial role in ensuing text-connectedness.
The illustrations of this special function are given through two case studies, the analysis of Hamlet's madness in Shakespeare's play and Raskolnikov's murder in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. In both cases, it is the semantic intersection of different text-layers that provides the clue for the realization of the mediatory function. In Hamlet, the most intensive semantic activity of this kind of intersection can be grasped in the interference of the plot level and a special metaphoric sequence evolving in the play. In Crime and Punishment, it is the active interrelation of several semantic evaluations of the murder that serves as the basis for the meaning shift linked with the protagonist's figure, including his transformation.
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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- Foreword
- Introduction: The concept of emergence in philosophical and semiotic context
- Conceptual knowledge as emergence
- Representation as emergence: Evoking and encoding past and history
- Emergence and reference in Whitehead's Process and Reality
- ‘The emergence of an organic form out of a fluid medium’: The dynamic concept of work of art in German Romanticism
- On a special case of meaning-emergence in the literary text: The function of semantic formations with ‘contradictory’ sense-orientation in the process of poetic meaning-evolution
- Did the gods go crazy? Emergence and symbols (a few laws in the symbolism of objects)
- Emergence as a phenomenon of cultural history and language
- Introduction: From linguistic semiotics to cultural semiotics: Semiotic and narrative studies in China
- Anxieties of modernity: A semiotic analysis of globalization images in China
- I Ching and the origin of the Chinese semiotic tradition
- Fictional narrative as history: Reflection and deflection
- The voice of ten years of history: A narrative-semiotic approach to the Eight Revolutionary Model Plays
- The narrative strategy of Chinese avant-garde novels: The case of Mo Yan
- Présentation
- Semiotic research in Morocco: An inventory
- Barthes ou Eco
- Semiotique de la reception et approche semantique du texte litteraire
- La dimension interprétante de l'expérience onirique dans la tradition onirocritique musulmane
- Social context, language, and semiosis in Wole Soyinka
- Le corps comme non-signe dans la tradition arabo-musulmane
Articles in the same Issue
- Foreword
- Introduction: The concept of emergence in philosophical and semiotic context
- Conceptual knowledge as emergence
- Representation as emergence: Evoking and encoding past and history
- Emergence and reference in Whitehead's Process and Reality
- ‘The emergence of an organic form out of a fluid medium’: The dynamic concept of work of art in German Romanticism
- On a special case of meaning-emergence in the literary text: The function of semantic formations with ‘contradictory’ sense-orientation in the process of poetic meaning-evolution
- Did the gods go crazy? Emergence and symbols (a few laws in the symbolism of objects)
- Emergence as a phenomenon of cultural history and language
- Introduction: From linguistic semiotics to cultural semiotics: Semiotic and narrative studies in China
- Anxieties of modernity: A semiotic analysis of globalization images in China
- I Ching and the origin of the Chinese semiotic tradition
- Fictional narrative as history: Reflection and deflection
- The voice of ten years of history: A narrative-semiotic approach to the Eight Revolutionary Model Plays
- The narrative strategy of Chinese avant-garde novels: The case of Mo Yan
- Présentation
- Semiotic research in Morocco: An inventory
- Barthes ou Eco
- Semiotique de la reception et approche semantique du texte litteraire
- La dimension interprétante de l'expérience onirique dans la tradition onirocritique musulmane
- Social context, language, and semiosis in Wole Soyinka
- Le corps comme non-signe dans la tradition arabo-musulmane
