Regulated verse and semiotic structure: a poem by Li Shangyin (李商隠)

Abstract

My expanded version of Michael Riffaterre’s semiotic theory of poetry deals essentially with modernist work. Here, I apply it to a 4-line Chinese lü-shi (律詩) of the Tang Dynasty, which has much formal parallelism – enquiring whether it may also have modern features. According to the theory, a modern poetic text is generated by two underlying “matricial” propositions, each of which produces a set of variant images having the same underlying semantic structure. This paradigmatic method of signifying is characteristic of modern poetry. Each matrix is reconstructed by the reader from a comparison of the images of each set. The matrices are linked syntagmatically in a variety of relations such as negation or difference of scale. The bimatricial text (subject-sign) has an intertextual counterpart (object-sign) of similar structure but different lexicon. The interpretant of these two complex signs has a sociolectic counterpart of similar lexicon but different structure. The semantic contrast thus established produces innovation, which is the other distinctive feature of modern poetry. Our lü-shi turns out to have a bimatricial semiotic structure; this raises the question of whether or not it is innovative. Could some such poems be considered “modernist”?