Where Codes Meet: On the Literary Uses of Iconic Signs
Where Codes Meet: On the Literary Uses of Iconic Signs

Summary/Abstract: Combination of Word and Image has been recently made part of literary works, with increasing frequency (e.g. novel narratives or lyrical monologues). In such cases, image becomes part of the utterance itself, finding a place for itself in a certain sender-receiver relationship arrangement, thus also becoming a pole of various meaning-generating tensions and an integral part of the entire work.The article aims at discussing the role that images, i.e. iconic signs, play in the structure of artistic pieces of this sort. The main focus is on the multiple semiotic games whose basis is the clash of differing sign-based orders, world-representing forms and communicativeconventions. Analysis of selected pieces aims at showing the multiplicity of possible functions ascribed to visual elements as part of verbal text. A comparison of the achievements of a few selected writers is also convincing of how mutually remote positions were assumed by artists against the significative value of iconic sings (from affirmation, criticism, through to problematisation).The condition for the reader to understand the arrangement s/he comes across is, therefore, to find its suspected motivations, to discover the premises providing the grounds for such a course of presentation, and, to formulate a hypothesis restoring the coherency of a text being based upon two incommensurable orders of meaning.

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