Remarks on Henry James.

It will, however, be clear that this structural arrangement of elements (semes) and basic oppositions is more analytical and microscopic than the terms of the levels,which turn out to be the various syntheses or combinations produced by the basic oppositions here. So in a sense the semiotic square comes after the positing of the allegorical levels and serves to explain or at least to explicate it. It also presupposesan interaction between the terms that is absent from the rather static schema of thelevels, in which each interpretive level is distinct from the others and lies parallel tothem. The proposal is meant to be suggestive rather than “definitive” (whatever thatmight mean), methodological rather than genuinely interpretative. But as these fine papers set out to deal with my own work as well as that of James, these concluding speculations may serve, for good or ill, to indicate the directions my current readings are tending to follow (and have for some time, I guess).