Christian Matthiessen and verbal art

The chapter deals with Matthiessen’s perhaps lesser known contribution to the theory and practice of systemic functional stylistics, or ‘verbal art’. It explores how, in aiming at a comprehensive characterization of discursive engagement with literature, his work promptly and openly takes up Halliday and Hasan’s research on language in literature, but also amplifies and enriches their legacy in various ways. Thus I trace: how he makes plain and illustrates key semiotic dimensions of the overall SFL architecture at the basis of verbal art theory and its application; how he locates verbal art within a typology of systems at work in an overall architecture of language in context(s) – contextual, linguistic (semantic and lexicogrammatical) and other semiotic systems, as well as social ones; how he innovatively brings into the knowledge-base his ‘registerial cartography’, a typology of fields of activity within context, which interprets fiction as operating in contexts where the activity is of ‘recreating’ aspects of life, in contrast to what he distinguishes as the sub-register of discourse about literature, involving other activities. Finally, I point up the computational and multi-semiotic facets in Matthiessen’s work.