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It is traditionally maintained in structural linguistics that by cutting verbal signs off each other paradigmatically, and enchaining some of them against the others syntagmatically, language system makes a body of text signify a certain meaning which is sustainable through contextual fluctuations. In line with this Saussurian assumption, and in an attempt to ascertain the authorial intention in literary works, many literary scholars have been mistaken rhetorics for criticism, albeit under the rubrics of structural poetics. This article, however, dismisses the futile attempt to pull certain meanings out of literary masterpiecesfor the purpose of investigating the origins of textuality in any work—let it not be shelved as great literature or literary at all. It aims to demonstrate why such mechanical procedures, prevalent in rhetorical studies, cannot account for textuality beyond the question of the thematic unity of a work; wherein textuality and plurality of text are suppressed in favor of the integrity and entirety required for works of verbal art. To account for the extensive significance of text and the abundance of its possible readings, a seemingly heterogeneous body of texts (including a piece of a poem, an extract from an article, and a vignette) has been analyzed within a reader-oriented framework. Drawing on Roland Barthes (1981), Asgari Pashaei (1995) and Christian Metz (1982), I have tried to move away from rhetorics toward a more proper notion of literary criticism.     

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Semiotic Square, as a model trying to analyze and explain the foundation of signification, was ‎firstly developed by Greimas. This model is the logical outcome of the development of binary ‎oppositions, and is based on the primary structure of signification. It was first used in the ‎structural analysis of narratives. However, Greimas, Rastier and some other members of Paris ‎school applied it in the field of semiotics of poetry, as well. Nevertheless, researches using ‎this model in the field of Persian literature are mainly concerned with its application in the ‎structural analysis of either prose or verse narratives, and as a consequence, there is no ‎comprehensive research which analyses the process of signification in poetry according to this ‎model. Hence, after providing the basic assumptions of semiotic model, the present article ‎tries to apply it in a semiotic reading of poetry. Therefore, at first the basic components of ‎semiotic square and their combination methods is explained and afterwards the internal ‎organization of the components of a poem by Attar, Mowlavi, and Hafiz is respectively ‎analyzed. Such a research not only provides the possibility of the analysis of the poem's ‎structure, and brings forth some of its latent perspectives, but also offers a reader-oriented ‎model which indicates how a potent reader recognize and categorize the semantic ‎components of the poem so as to arrive at a better understanding. ‎