Diagramming Literary Meaning

Chapter 3 (“Diagramming Literary Meaning”) introduces the idea of the diagrammatic nature and diagrammatic function of the literary text, made manifest in the way it creates meaning. Literature is first composed in the Virtual before being written in the Actual and the creative reader can decipher in the actualized text some of its “agencements” (assemblages) conceived in the Virtual, thanks to a pattern of abstract relations superimposed on the linguistic statement. The presentation of the difference between a trivial illustrative diagram and a complex diagram as it appears throughout the works of Charles S. Peirce, Gilles Deleuze and the philosopher of mathematics Gilles Châtelet, leads to an explanation of the reasons why the concept of diagram can be a precious tool to study literature and why it has to be extended to that of diagramming in order to serve disciplines like architecture, design, art installations or choreography. Finally, a very detailed study of poems by Emily Dickinson and E.E. Cummings demonstrates the nature and function of diagrammatism in literature.