Multimodal Poetic Iconicity in Jimmy's The Moon Forgets

This article draws on the theory of poetic iconicity as expounded by Margret.H.Freeman to offer a tentative study on how multimodality affects its realization through an analysis of a pictorial narrative by a Taiwan Residents writer—Jimmy’s The Moon Forgets.The analysis shows that,different from its performance in verbal texts,poetic iconicity in a multimodal literary work is achieved by tapping the immense potential inherent in pictorial-verbal conf igurations.Diagrammatic iconicity,seen in its narrative structure and in the multimodal configuration of the story,is found in this case to serve the global metaphor LIFE-DEATH IS A CYCLE and contribute to an aesthetically wild ecstasy.The metaphorical implications in relation to the theme within the scope of diagrammatic iconicity help constitute the ineffable charm of this pictorial fiction.Multimodal poetic iconicity—deploying diverse structural patterns and relational conf igurations to create an artistic resemblance to the abstract patterns in feelings and thoughts—is shown to be an important contributing factor in the effectiveness of the work’s literary communication.