The literary work in the era of signs explosion: a semiotic proposal of analysis of the novel

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodological approach of the novel based on Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics, by using the universal categories of the firstness, secondness and thirdness for analysis of literary texts. A brief analysis of the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith, is made, in order to demonstrate the applicability and relevance of the proposed methodology. It was concluded that, given the contemporaneous complexity in terms of the multiplication of signs, the approach can be advantageous for requiring the analysis of the aspects of the novel, without neglecting the participation of the analyst’s own subjectivity.