Iconizing literature is a practice that includes the fragmentation of literary works, the emancipation of its elements from their literary origin, and the largely-uncontrolled intermedia circulation that works around established gatekeepers and institutions: images and names of authors and literary characters or quotations which are being used in different media, art, and advertisement. However, this convergence culture (Henry Jenkins) is not restricted to visual or verbal icons but includes also whole sign complexes, such as the concept of literature itself. These sign complexes are conceptual icons which are metonymically represented through marked or un-marked references to works and authors, their cultural status or discourses such as reception history. This chapter examines forms and functions of this transfictional (Saint-Gelais) reference system in the literary works of Thomas Mann, Angela Carter and Milan Kundera and (what may appear as an unexpected parallel) the US-American horror comedy Vampires vs. the Bronx. In particular it focusses on the role of literary knowledge that is necessary to decode the manifold metonymic references to the conceptual icon “literature” which are used to comment on the veneration and iconization of the author or on a certain reception history.