Document Type : Original Article
Author
-Associate professor of Persian language and literature Humanities faculty- University of Isfahan
Abstract
This article employs a psychoanalytic and semiotic approach to analyze Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “Signs and Symbols”, demonstrating how the Lacanian subject, when confronted with referential paranoia, experiences categorical errors and distortions of meaning. The study explores the complex interaction between the subject and the signs and symbols, showing that the lived experience and understanding of meaning in the story are shaped not merely by causal relationships, but through simultaneous, contradictory, and socially unverified significations. Analysis of various sections of the story, with a focus on psychoanalytic, philosophical, and semantic components, reveals that the unraveling of meaning for both the subject and the reader is constrained by structural and cognitive limitations, which themselves emerge from the tension between objective experience, subjective interpretation, and psychological pressures. The findings indicate that Nabokov, by creating semantic fluidity and a multiplicity of significations, actively invites the reader to engage in the recognition and production of meaning. Consequently, the narrative space functions not as a linear story but as a domain for experiencing existential and cognitive complexity, where readers confront layered meanings shaped by the interplay of personal interpretation, textual structure, and symbolic density, allowing for deep reflection on subjectivity, psychic conflict, and the dynamic interaction with signs.
Keywords
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