The musicality of literature and the semiotics of music

First Online: 02 December 2017 Serija: Numanities - arts and humanities in progress, ISSN 2510-442X

The musicality of literary text can be analyzed in many aspects and using various methodologies, the main ones being hermeneutical and semiotic; but other methods are useful as well (the method of functional analysis, various conceptions of forms of classical and modern music, etc.). The aim of this paper is to discuss some terms of generative semiotics, which can be applied for the analysis of musicality in a literary text (e.g., passion concept, etc.), and also to specify several applied concepts of music semiotics. In this way, the possibilities of the analysis of literary text musicality will be enriched and the terminology will be specified. In this work, the research will be limited to several aspects of textual musicality, which can be applied in these levels of texts: the so-called word music (phonics, syntax, metrics, etc.) and music forms and technique analogues in literature. The works of Eero Tarasti, Algirdas Julius Greimas, Werner Wolf, Mikhail Bakhtin, Viktor Bobrovsky, Inga Jasinskaitė-Jankauskienė, Kęstutis Nastopka, etc., will be used.