John Hopkins
A new methodology for interpreting modern poetry (1803-present) based on semiotic principles. This approach shows how modern poetry (or architecture, for that matter) provides a new, alternative mechanism for conveying meaning, which cannot be explained by the grammar or semantics of narrative prose. I use 22 example texts, from Victor Hugo to Michael Hofmann (2017), in English, French, and Japanese. The fact that the approach applies across a range of languages suggests its universality.
For the first time we have an empirical approach to interpreting modern poetry which allows any educated reader to reach much the same conclusions regarding the meaning of the text. Moreover, the universality of the semiotic theory used permits it to apply to work in a wide range of languages.
I am grateful to Prof Michael Riffaterre, emeritus at Columbia University, for his pioneering work in the semiotics of poetry (1966-1996). I organised his official lecture tour of Japan, in 1986, accompanying him throughout. Riffaterre's theory has needed modifying, both to take into account the semiotic complexity of the modernist text, and to show how the product of text and intertext – their interpretant – calls up, in the mind of the reader, a sociolectic context against the background of which the textual triad of signs makes an innovative statement.
Educator briefing
This book may be used as a textbook – certainly at university level, and perhaps at high school level – for the teaching of the structure and interpretation of modern poetry in a range of languages.
The semiotic theory of poetic structure adopted is based on M. Riffaterre's, with modifications which increase the internal complexity of the text.
