Transmedial tropes : a semiotic excursion from the literary text to sculpture

Starting from the semiotic considerations of Barthes on the rhetoric of the image and of Lotman on iconic rhetoric, and drawing further inspiration from phenomenological semiotics of Wiesing, the author proposes a transmedial search for visual master tropes in selected instances of 19th and 20th-century European sculpture. In conclusion, the author claims that the openness of semiotic studies is both internal (among distinct semiotic codes and methodological paradigms) and external, reaching out to other disciplines.