Sinn ohne Bedeutung. Gottlob Freges semantische Definition von Dichtung

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Gottlob Frege’s attempt in “On Sense and Reference” to determine semantically what poetry is. Therefore, Frege’s assumptions as well as strategies concerning the distinction between poetic and non-poetic discourse are analyzed in order to show in which way a theory of “poetic meaning” is possible. Frege’s rather inconspicuous explanation of poetry, although itself quite unsatisfactory in the end, allows us to strengthen the hope for a ‘minimal’ semantic theory of poetry that depends on a certain idea of fictionality.