Icon

Abstract Icons mean different things to different people. This chapter describes how the term icon is understood in semiotics, linguistics, religion, and popular discourse in order to establish a working definition for understanding how a poem can become an icon. Iconicity is the means whereby poetic features contribute to achieving a poem’s status as an icon. The chapter then takes up two problematic issues in the question of “meaning.” Making objects (nouns) out of actions (verbs) obscures the processes of minding that underlie aesthetic activity. Likewise, separating form from content obscures the integrated relation between “ceptions” (conceptions, perceptions, and proprioceptions) and structures. By replacing these assumptions from a cognitive science approach, the chapter prepares the groundwork for understanding the role of iconicity in the arts. After giving some examples of iconicity in literary critical approaches to poetry, it ends with a brief summary of the main features that constitute poetic iconicity.