04_Alina Buzatu.pdf

<font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span>: The present paper deals with the binomial to read / to imagine and its taxinomic<br>definitions in various aesthetic paradigms. The point of departure is the discrimination between<br>mimetic and non-mimetic texts and the ways they are (semantically) tributary (or not) to the reference<br>world. The focus is on the idea that the conversion of signifiers and the negotiation of meaning are<br>guided by textual procedures. They act as operational instructions for the reader or, as I put it, a<br>User’s Guide to reading. The more elaborated they are, the more intense is the autotelism, the<br>narcissistic nature of a given text. The parameters of fictionalization are discussed contrastively using<br>two aesthetic paradigms (Realism and Surrealism) and their epitomic examples (Flaubert’s Madame<br>Bovary and, respectively, Breton’s Nadja). At the superficial narrative level, these texts actualize the<br>theme of love (licit or illicit, euphoric or deluded, real or specious etc.); in the profound semiotic<br>layers, these two entities are self-referenced. But, if the Realist work dissimulates its specularity, the<br>Surrealist text is ostentatiously self-reflexive; the Realist art creates possible possible worlds, while<br>the Surrealist doctrine is the recipe for the impossible possible worlds.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Key words</span>: autopoiesis ; specularity;textual procedures ; User’s guide to reading; Realism;<br>Surrealism</font>

(Il)Legitimate Appendages: The Case of Psalmanazar’s Prefaces

<P align=left><I><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT face="Times New Roman">In 1704, George Psalmanazar, a supposed native of the island of Formosa, added his own fabulous construction of another world to an England which was already abundant in fictitious travel accounts. Written 60 years later, Psalmanazar’s own Memoirs did not manage to cast a clear light on the author’s inauthentic discourse. The problematic of legitimacy in relation to historical writings and works of fiction turned into a debatable cultural issue during the European eighteenth century. The great libraries and collections of manuscripts set up by Cotton or Pepys in the seventeenth century were later to be taken on by eighteenth-century scholars, whose job was to assess and legitimate their value. Psalmanazar’s fictitious account passed for a true description of Formosa after it had promoted textual and visual appendages to legitimate the authorial voice. The present article will look at the methods Psalmanazar used to legitimate both the authorial practices and the cultural and literary background against which eighteenth-century outstanding writers, such as Goldsmith and Swift, used Psalmanazar as a source of legitimate inspiration for their writings. </FONT></FONT></I></P>