Amazon.com description: Product Description: In Semiotics of Poetry, Michael Riffaterre proposes a startling, if simple, alternative to mimesis in poetry. Poetic discourse, he argues, represents nothing but itself. The meaning of a poem depends not on the semantic grid of language but on a semiotic system determined by the text's own structures. Using the key concepts of intertextuality and the overdetermination of poetic discourse, Riffaterre dazzlingly demonstrates the application of his theories to the interpretation of a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French poetry.