From Figurative Representations to Metaphoric Deformations: The Iconic Text Layout in Contemporary Narrative Fiction in English

Grzegorz Maziarczyk

Grzegorz Maziarczyk The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities

Keywords: text layout; iconicity; semiotisation; The Raw Shark Texts; Albert Angelo; Double or Nothing

Abstract

This essay seeks to analyse semiotisation of layout in narrative fiction and to demonstrate that various configurations of graphemes can be correlated with major types of iconicity distinguished in semiotic studies. The figurative typographic representation of the eponymous shark in Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts is as an instance of imagic icon, reflecting its peculiar ontological status. The parallel columns exploited in B. S. Johnson’s Albert Angelo can be interpreted as a diagrammatic representation of processes happening simultaneously on the level of the presented world. Finally, in Raymond Federman’s Double or Nothing the abundance of diverse typographic deformations, which vary from ostentatiously iconic to purely arbitrarily forms, constitutes a complex iconic metaphor of the creative process. Significantly, while the diagrammatic arrangement employed in Albert Angelo conveys its meaning via the typographic means only, the other two novels rely on the inevitable interplay between iconic and symbolic modes of signification.

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