Mellem form og indhold

Om forbindelsen mellem de sproglige og materielle tegn i Amalie Smiths tre værker I civil, Marble og Et hjerte i alt

Abstract

This article is a stylistic examination of the danish author and artist Amalie Smiths three works I civil (2012), Marble (2014) and Et hjerte i alt (2017). I will look into how her work deals with material, surfaces and form. To approach the question of style-characteristics, I’ll situate the examination in dialogue with three different levels (or forms) of perspective: 1. Themes of the texts, 2. Genre features and metaphors, 3. Materialization (form as content; content as form). The article will investigate both linguistic phenomena in the works and how these works also communicate meaning through nonverbal elements. In relation to this question of non-verbal communication, the article will include and unfold concepts presented by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette and the three American scholars Jerome J. McGann, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Genette’s theory is based upon structuralism and implies a total-system of interconnected signs where a full understanding of any given text is only achieved through a thorough examination of all its present signs and their relations. On that note, this article investigates the signs and their interconnectedness in each work and illustrates how the meaning of a sign is influenced by another.