Literary Language

Chapter 2 (“Literary Language”) aims to provide the reader with both a theoretical and a practical view of the nature and function of literary texts, beginning with the Russian semiotician Jurij Lotman’s original conception of the literary sign and its meaning, followed by S. J. Schmidt’s introduction of the importance of the F Rule (Fiction Rule) to broaden the reader’s perceptual and cognitive experience. The poet and mathematician Jacques Roubaud defines the pioneering role of literature in the evolution and transformation of pragmatic language, while Paul Valéry explores the internal dynamics of the creativity of literature, recognized by many writers and philosophers as “a language within a language”. Examples, excerpted from several literary texts by William Golding, Grace Paley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson and Francis Ponge render these ideas and processes more concrete.