This thesis was born from a longstanding interest in the materiality of language and, more precisely, that of poetry. These introductory remarks trace the inception of that journey.
Mallarmé’s famous dictum: ‘All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book’ is the starting point for a three-part analysis of materiality, one applied to his Le Livre.
This chapter draws upon the work of Huisman, Riffaterre and Perloff to establish the material basis of poetry. Above all, it is a genre that is visual and semiotically ungrammatical.
Having established a material basis for poetry, I outline a model for its material expression as a language object, one that draws heavily on the work of Arakawa and Gins.
These concluding remarks draw out the key threads of this thesis. They distill its overall essence and propose a basis from which a critical assessment of material poems might proceed.
This research draws together an eclectic range of readings, ranging from communications theory through to contemporary poetics. All texts referenced in the thesis are listed here.