A view from the margins

The focus of this essay is the little known contribution to the field of literary iconicity by Afrikaans literary theorists in the seventies and eighties in South Africa, especially the research done by H.C.T. Müller. The rationale for this is my contention that the theory of literary iconicity put forward by Müller might be used both to shed light on some of the problems that contemporary iconicity theorists, like Paul Bouissac and others, experience with aspects of the current research conducted within the framework of the (New) Iconicity Research Project and to perhaps point the way to a consolidation of current views in a comprehensive theory of iconicity.