Repetition and Semiotics: Interpreting Prose Poems

This study questions the contemporary theoretical emphasis on 'difference' while reinstating the fundamental role played by repetition within the critical enterprise itself. Repetition is shown to be the conceptual basis not only for the production of literature, but also for its interpretation. Using numerous examples from the prose poems of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Breton, Professor Metzidakis establishes a typology of common linguistic structures which most critics isolate in order to interpret 'literary' style in different ways. This formal description of txtuality leads to a new understanding of 'literariness.'