Per una semiotica della rima

Abstract The article, following a suggestion of Barthes, attempts to outline a semiotics of the technique of rhyming considered as a sub-code of poetic language, in order to better understand the important contribution provided by rhyme, on many levels, to the strategies of signification of the literary text. This semiotic approach is inscribed in a general theory of rhyme under development by the author, which aims at explaining the raison d’être and fortune of this poetic device in relation to its decisive contribution to the rhetorical and figurative elaboration of the poetic text. In a semiotic perspective, three fundamental levels of structuring rhyme as a sign can be distinguished: its signifier (the partial phonic identity which, in the current view, is considered to be rhyme’s exhaustive definition), its meaning (the semantic interference between rhyming words only) and its sense (the relation between rhyme’s meaning and context). A short reference is also made to further aspects of the the sub-code of rhyme, such as its syntax (strophic patterns) and the role of pools of rhymes. This leads to a reappraisal of some significant questions raised by the technique of rhyme, e. g. whether or not it always makes a semantic contribution, or what the interplay between its limitations to freedom of expression and its contribution to the expressiveness and poetic value of the text is. The theoretical tools are finally put to the test in a short analysis of the rhyme-words in the form of the sestine.