deconstruction

The text is dedicated to the use of poetical figures and of images in the working with concepts, namely within the field of philosophy and literary theory. The large excursus starts from an attempt of the American theoretician Mitchell to define images by only restricting his effort to historicizing the definition – with no definition of himself. A follow-up is the conception of Jacques Derrida of all metaphysical concepts being hidden metaphors whose meaning was depleted of figuration. In this context is viewed the work of Hegel on symbolic thought and memory. Image is revealed as an instrument of memory. And finally, there is a hypothesis of the material in signification borrowed to a certain extent from the deconstructionist Paul de Man

The article analyses the theme of return and the figure of the circle in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” showing that through them the author describes both the play itself and the principle at work at the basis of law. The plot with the three caskets is interpreted as a form of self-modelling of the literary work, where the silver casket with its inscription (“Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves”) serves as an allegory of the compositional choices made in the comedy. The article also focuses on the question of the doubles, which is in contrast with the logic of return. In the study, two kinds of doubling are distinguished. On the one hand, doubling is interpreted in the sense of redoubling and splitting. On the other hand, it is understood as an element introducing non-coincidence and non-identity of the circle with itself.