The role of Vorstellung in literary semantics

In spite of the current panoply of approaches to literary semantics, this paper argues that the discipline suffers from one scandalous absence: the theorization of Vorstellung, or 'perceptual modfication.' The paper traces the trajectory of the elimination of Vorstellung in language semantics from Frege to Saussure and to the demise of the signified in the post-Saussurean tradition. Alternative perspectives are introduced that promise the rehabilitation of the perceptual ingredients of language, such as cognitive linguistics (Lakoff) and corporeal pragmatics (Ruthrof), approaches that could be used to revive literary semantics by granting Vorstellung its proper role in the theorization of literary meaning.