Semiotics of ideocriticism: Four strategies of modeling

Abstract The primary aim of the present paper is to examine the interrelations between definite ideologies and literature, more precisely the ways established ideologies are modeled in literature. The article therefore tries to examine two interwoven systems of signs: ideology as a semiotic system per se and the ideology within the literature; each has its own logical semiotics. For instance, on one side the ideology of feminism, or ecology, has two strategies of modeling: destructive (the actual) and constructive (the idealized), and like every ideology it has to map the independent borders of each strategy. On the other hand literature makes every effort to blur the bold distinctive borders of these strategies by means of artistic tools. That is, literature remodels the model of ideology. One mission of the reader is to try to reconstruct each model and see the interaction between them. Without doubt, the two models affect each other in a way that influences the final representation. Semiotics has not concerned itself with feminist values per se, but with the way they act semiotically.