Biosemiotics and literature

Abstract The aim of this paper is to continue the development of a biosemiotic literary criticism. Critics have made significant contributions to this emerging field. However, their work either largely focuses on introducing biosemiotics to a non-scientific audience or directly or indirectly limits the application of biosemiotic readings almost exclusively to nature texts. It is important to now direct our attention to a wider literature. Following a Deleuzean/autopoietic approach to biosemiotics and presenting theory alongside examples from literature, I will explore how life, as an emergent, semiotic process is narrativized and represented in literary texts. A key insight of biosemiotics is the assertion that human beings share a basic mode of biological and cognitive organization with other organisms. A notion of life grounded on semiosis is inherently creative. Literature, I argue, allows us to explore the aesthetic dimension of individual emergence and sense-making without undercutting or turning away from biosemiotics as a science. To make my case, I will present readings of the work of Virginia Woolf. Along the way, I will connect my readings to insights from biosemiotic and autopoietic theory in support of an understanding of life as a fundamentally aesthetic phenomenon.