The Sign of the Swan

Preface; Introduction: Baudelaire-Rimbaud-Mallarmé: Revolution and Revelation in Poetic Language; 1. Making Beings Speak: The Linguistic Epistemology of French Symbolist Poetry; Intrinsic Meanings of Things Expressed through Symbols; The Pre-semiological and Sub-semantic; 2. Illustrative Readings of Mallarmé's Poems as Symbolist Works; Sonnet en x ("Ses Purs Ongles"); Sonnet en i ("Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd'hui"); "L'après-midi d'un faune"; Undecidability Rather than Suppression of Reference; Meanderings of Chance from Igitur to Un coup de dés; 3. Symbolist Meaning and Subjective Feeling; 4. Mallarmé's Negative Poetics of De-Objectification through the Symbol; "L'après-midi d'un faune" Encore: From Representational; Emptying to Verbal Presence; Speaking the Being of Language-Or Rather its Nothing; Concluding Reflection; Bibliography; Index