Abstract

Icons are often made use of, in literary text, to represent thematic alaments which are expressed alongside non-iconically as well. Usually only individual striking examples of such iconic CONCRETIZATION are cited. Perhaps, it is time to start compiling a comprehensive dictionary of icons as used in poetry and narration. The purpose of this paper is both descriptive and theoretical. The descriptive interest lies in demonstrating intricate and far from obvious instances of iconic representation that occur at various levels of an artistic text, often in its minutest details. A theoretical problem concerns ways of adequate formulation of the correspondences between patterns obtaining on the expression plane and the thematic elements they mimic. A sort of transformation rules are suggested for the purpose; they could also serve eventually as the form the entries of future icon dictionaries are to be molded into. Three groups of icons are examined - those involving ‘lengthening/shortening of segments’, ‘reaching across boundaries’ and ‘transfer to the frame’. Examples are drawn from English light verse, French (Parny) and Russian poetry (Puškin, Pasternak, Majakovskij, Okudžava), Polish and Soviet films and Somali folklore.

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