The Bashful Paradigm (Matilda)
The Bashful Paradigm (Matilda)

Summary/Abstract: The article explores the literary works and destiny of Matilda Cugler-Poni, one of the first Romanian poetesses, placed by Titu Maiorescu among the living promises of literary revival in his famous article New Direction in Romanian Poetry and Prose (1872). The present article argues that through her poetry the standard image of the feminine hypostasis might be detected: built from fragility, delicacy, sensibility and rhetorical passion and focused on suffering in love. Nevertheless, this pendant of feminity, worn with grace by the poetess until the period between the wars, will be corrupted by a first impetus of emancipation and translated in a violent type of sensualisation of the language, as well as in images that aspire to bodily concreteness and directness.

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