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This collection of essays, originally published at different times, presents a coherent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of the work of literature and its major aspects. The approach, which may be called "Constructive Poetics," does not assume that a work of literature is a text with fixed structures and meanings, but a text that invites the reader to evoke or project a network of interrelated constructs, complementary or contradictory as they may be. The work of literature is not just a narrative, as studies in narratology assume, but a text that projects a fictional world, or an Internal Field of Reference. Meanings in a text are presented through the evocation of "frames of reference" (scenes, characters, ideas, etc.). Language in literature is double-directed: it relates the Internal Field to External Fields and vice versa. The essays explore the problems of fictionality, presentation and representation, metaphor as interaction between several frames of reference, the theory of "Integrational Semantics" in literary and other texts, the meaning of sound patterns in poetry, and the question of "literariness." This theory and its specific aspects were developed by the author in Israel in the 1960s and 1970s and lay at the foundations of the Tel-Aviv School of Poetics. Revived now, it resonates with the current mood in literary criticism.

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EXPLORATIONS IN POETICS

Stanford University Press

Contents

Preface...........................................................................................................................................................vii1 Fictionality and Fields of Reference: A Theoretical Framework...................................................................................................12 Metaphor and Frames of Reference: With Examples from Eliot, Rilke, Mayakovsky, Mandelshtam, Pound, Creeley, Amichai, and the New York Times.....................323 An Outline of Integrational Semantics: An Understander's Theory of Meaning in Context...........................................................................764 The Structure of Semiotic Objects: A Three-Dimensional Model....................................................................................................1135 On Presentation and Representation in Fiction...................................................................................................................1286 The Meaning of Sound Patterns in Poetry: An Interaction Theory..................................................................................................1407 "Literariness" Revisited: A Contemporary Manifesto..............................................................................................................1618 The Structure of Non-Narrative Fiction: The First Episode of War and Peace......................................................................................174References to Chapters 1-8........................................................................................................................................211FRAMEWORKS9 The Elusive Science of Literature: Remarks on the Fields and Responsibilities of the Study of Literature [Tel-Aviv 1968]........................................21510 A Unified Theory of the Literary Text [Berkeley 1972]..........................................................................................................250Sources of the Chapters...........................................................................................................................................271Index.............................................................................................................................................................273

Chapter One

A Theoretical Framework

PREFACE

1. Works of literature convey meanings and meaning complexes as well as rhetorical and aesthetic import; they require of the reader some kind of "experience" or "concretization" and call for interpretations and elucidations. However, the experience and interpretation of literary texts are not a matter of language alone: language in literature can be understood only as embedded in fictional or projected constructs-situations, characters, ideas-no matter how partial or unstable these may be. On the other hand, the fictional constructs in literary texts-the situations, characters and ideas-are mediated through language alone. This is one basic inherent circularity of works of literary art.

It is not necessarily a logical "vicious circle," but can be understood as a detailed interdependence between the two domains: language and fictional constructs. We cannot simply build up or deduce the one from the other "objectively," as it were. An interpretation involves making certain hypotheses on aspects of this interdependence.

2. Let us take a simple example. The sentence "Everything changes" appears on the first page of Joyce's short story "Eveline." What does it mean? Can we understand it from the language itself, from the two simple English words? Does it convey the same thing as a similar idea uttered by an ancient Greek philosopher? What is the scope of the word "everything" and how serious is the commitment behind this assertion?

Indeed, this sentence may refer to permanent changes in nature, the destruction and recomposition of matter; or changes in society; or to biological changes in the lives of people.

The immediate context is: That was a long time ago; she [Eveline] and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. Here, the sentence "Everything changes" can be taken as a generalization of the facts stated in the neighboring sentences. It may then either apply in a general way, as a characteristic of life: people move, grow up, die, leave home; or, in a more limited scope, as a summary of the destinies of the people around our character, Eveline. If we enlarge the context somewhat to other things described in the opening of the story, we may assume that "everything changes" applies to Dublin and its traditional world: a man from Belfast "came" and built new houses, foreign workers appeared, red brick houses were built, etc. Furthermore, Eveline's own leaving home is seen as a deduction from a general principle, and the story itself becomes an example of it. (The cover of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Dubliners says: "The incidents he [Joyce] relates are small in themselves but of universal interest.")

In any case, to understand what the sentence conveys, we must consider the fictional "reality" to which it is applied, and the scope of things it may cover. Indeed, as we saw above, we may apply it in turn to several frames of reference, in the fictional as well as in the real world, as part of interpretation hypotheses.

When we read the whole story, however, it turns out that Eveline does not leave. She, who tried to escape the destiny of her mother, "becomes" her mother. In her life, at least, nothing changes. To the extent that Eveline can be seen as representative, as some readers would see her, the story epitomizes in Joyce's words, the "paralysis" of Ireland. Indeed, we may assign the interpretive construct "nothing changes" to the position of the narrator (or above him, to the implied author). This conclusion-nothing changes-is not stated in explicit language but results from a summary of the plot. Such a summary, however, contradicts the statement "everything changes" as understood before. To resolve the contradiction, the assertion "Everything changes" must be limited to Eveline's own point of view and to the circumstances, the time and place when it was uttered (or experienced), i.e., when Eveline thought that she, too, was leaving. This statement underlines the discrepancy between Eveline's understanding of her situation and the real state of affairs; or between her youthful "revolt" and its defeat. It represents the ironic distance between the constant present time of the character's experience-moving with the story and ignorant of the future-into which the reader is temporarily drawn, and the past of the narrator's perspective, which the reader grasps fully only at the end.

This dependence of language on "reality constructs" (which, in turn, are built from elements of language), as seen in such a simple utterance, is even more crucial in the "difficult" and figurative language of poetry, where words may be wide open for ambiguities and must be limited by fictional constructs (see Chapter 2 on metaphor).

3. This is not the only basic circularity, or interdependence, inherent in literary texts....