La poetica di titoli e copertine dei gialli di Dar’ja Doncova

Abstract

This paper investigates the titles and the covers of Darya Dontsova’s detective novels. Starting from a number of considerations on the importance and function of the title in literary texts in general, the work focuses on the investigation of this phenomenon in mass popular literature, the genre which Dontsova’s novels belong to. The article describes the linguistic and semiotic processes on which the choice of the titles and the covers is based. The principal semantic groups, the relationship between the titles of Dontsova’s novels and the series in which they are grouped are also examined. The numerous intertextual references that can be found in the titles on the one hand render the titles more attractive, on the other hand reveal a refined and sophisticated operation, the result of a poetic expression of our times.