Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms Cover Image

„Drovių ir basų eilėraščių“ pavadinimai: apie Jano Tvardovskio neaiškius sinekdochinius biblionimus
Titles of Poems Timid and Barefoot: on Jan Twardowski’s Vague Synecdochical Biblionyms

Author(s): Serhiy Yermolenko
Subject(s): Semiotics / Semiology, Theoretical Linguistics, Epistemology, Descriptive linguistics, Polish Literature
Published by: Lietuvių Kalbos Institutas
Keywords: Jan Twardowski; biblionym; sign representation; motivation; text structure;

Summary/Abstract: The author focuses on some titles of poems by the Polish author priest Jan Twardowski (1915-2006) which he calls synecdochical (since they repeat a part of the text they name), in particular, those of them which seem to be uninformative, randomly and arbitrarily chosen as well as vaguely, if at all, motivated by the poem’s content. He explains their specific nature as determined by semiotic features of motivation proper to them as poetic text names, on the one hand, and by their role as an integral part of poetic text, on the other: taken out of their context and put in the prominent position of the title, such text fragments not only formally designate the text according to the ‘pars pro toto’ principle, but also get reinterpreted, acquiring new meaning as well as imparting an additional sense to the poem. The seeming vagueness of such titles acts as a means of making the reader seek the information they add to the text. Because of their vagueness and utter stylistic modesty, these titles represent those features of J. Twardowski’s poetics that reflect the Christian virtues of poverty and the belief in the incredible.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 72
  • Page Range: 136-152
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: English