Rhetoric of Metafemininity. From Colette to Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu
Rhetoric of Metafemininity. From Colette to Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu

Summary/Abstract: An effect of the interwar cultural modernity, the visibility of the women-writers in the space of Romanian literature was also possible through the assimilation of the patterns of feminine writing, already outlined in Western literatures. French writer Sidonie- Gabrielle Colette influenced the Romanian feminine prose of the interwar period with her meta-feminine writings, freed from prejudice and canons, in which the depth of introspection is combined with the incandescence of sensations. Similar features may be traced in the subjective-lyrical prose that characterizes Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s literary debut, which determines a certain stylistic and thematic resemblance between the two congeneric writers, beyond their inherent discontinuities. However, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu intertextually reveals her dialogue with “the great Colette” only in her last novel, Străina, a work considered lost for a long time, recently recovered and published.

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