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The aim of this paper is to discuss the limits of the intersemiotic perspective in favour of intermedial and performative approaches. The concept of intersemiotic translation focuses on the meaning transferred from one sign system to another. Consequently, sign systems are considered largely in regard to the significant power of their semantic, syntactic and structural devices. However, contemporary art and communication often take advantage of the materiality of signs. This quality, along with the problem of mediation, becomes crucial when sign systems are considered as media. That is why intermedial studies offer a more adequate approach to a wide range of modern communicative strategies. The problem should be examined on base of some examples from concrete poetry: a paradigmatic intermedial art form which exposes the materiality of language in two medial shapes – as the written medium and as the oral medium, suggested by the written form, performed live or recorded and processed by means of studio techniques. The latter is strongly connected to the aesthetics of the performative which has been a new principle of modern art, according to Erika Fischer-Lichte. Its aim is not to generate and convey meanings, but to create phenomena to be received as they are. The scrutiny of such phenomena goes far beyond semiotic analysis, taking medial and performative aspects into consideration.

I study the returns to investments in durable assets since the start of the twentieth century. These assets are generally characterized by relatively low capital gains and substantial price fluctuations. The rate of value appreciation has been more pronounced for collectibles, but transaction costs are very high in such markets as well. However, a rental income yield can add substantially to the returns on housing and land, and likewise owners of collectibles may receive a significant emotional dividend. Because of the lack of such an income or utility stream, gold, silver, and diamonds appear to have been particularly bad long-term investments (at least if not held in the form of jewelry). Finally, durable assets are unlikely to be good inflation hedges, but they may still help diversifying a portfolio because of the imperfect correlations with financial assets.

In this article I will analyze three satirical stories written by Edgar A. Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain. The common denominator of them is the presence of dogs and their eccentric subject matter and controversial narrative strategies have for many decades been treated as a major offense against the standards of literary taste. A closer analysis of such thoughtprovoking and critically underrated tales as “Toby Dammit,” “Oil of Dog” or “A Dog’s Tale” makes it evident that their powerful effect is possible thanks to transgression and subversion of generic expectations and aesthetic norms as well as social, political and religious issues that dominated the public discourse in the nineteenth-century United States. Furthermore, what might be perceived as a temporary rebellion or a mere irregularity in the literary oeuvre of three unquestionably canonical nineteenth-century writers is, in fact, a conscious, if risky, attempt on the part of Poe, Twain and Bierce to offer meaningful diagnoses of a society whose values and behaviours appear to be even more disgusting and irrational than the bizarre and often highly disturbing plotlines and extreme experiences in the fictitious worlds they created. Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00.