I am first defining the poetic function
in a
negative manner, following Roman Jakobson, as the inverse of the referential function understood
in a narrow descriptive sense, then
in a positive way as what
in my
volume on metaphor I call the metaphorical reference.7 And
in this regard, the most extreme paradox is that when language most enters into fiction — e.g., when a poet forges the plot of a tragedy — it most speaks truth because it redescribes reality so well known that it is taken for granted
in terms of the new features of this plot.