The Intertext as Discursive Subversion: Legături Bolnăvicioase/ Love Sick, Cecilia Ştefănescu

• Main Author: Violeta-Teodora LUNGEANU
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Casa Cărții de Știință 2014-12-01
• Series: Cultural Intertexts
• Subjects: intertext; autofiction; feminine writing; erotic literature
• Online Access: https://cultural-intertexts.webnode.com/_files/200000242-851b7851b9/188-205%20Lungeanu%20-%20The%20Intertext%20as%20Discursive%20Subversion%20%E2%80%93%20Leg%C4%83turi%20Boln%C4%83vicioase%20Love%20Sick,%20Cecilia%20%C5%9Etef%C4%83nescu.pdf

Approaching a topic yet unexplored in Romanian literature – a lesbian relationship – the novel Legături bolnăvicioase/ Love Sick opens the path for an interest stirring analysis on its thematic and narrative construction, but obstructed, nonetheless, by prejudice and prudishness. The love story between the narrator and Alex (her girlfriend) is, ultimately, a pretext for a piece of écriture féminine, typified by language and imaginative specificities. While following a feminine, autofictional pattern, the novel enters an intertextual dialogue with a series of texts belonging to the (male) canon of erotic literature. If the title alludes to a novel of “sentimental education”, reminding of de Laclos’s masterpiece, Les Liaisons dangereuses ou lettres recueillies dans une société et publiées pour l’instruction de quelques autres, the novelesque discourse displays the intertextual game in an autofictional key, occasionally subverting male patterns. Along these lines, the present paper aims at analysing the functioning of intertextual mechanisms as means of subverting the male discourse, but also the manner in which the feminine discourse challenges canonical conventions and traditional reception.