Sfidând granițele literaturii canonice: literatura licențioasă
Rezumat
Defying the Boundaries of Canonical Literature: Licentious Literature
Abstract: As a victim of prejudices fueled by a rationale of social, economic, and cultural control, licentious literature still stands nowadays at the opposite pole of canonical—or hyper-canonical—literature. Using the conceptual apparatus supported by David Damrosch, this literary genre belongs, with few exceptions, to the shadow canon and counter canon. Although licentious literature represents an artistic manifestation that advocates for freedom of thought, expression, and creation, its libertine, obscene, erotic, or even pornographic nature and language have pushed it into a corner. By placing themselves on the edge, various writers from different ages have engaged with this type of writing, which is also a way of exposing social norms, dominant cultural discourse of a certain era, or the literary limits; and they have done so without fail, in some cases, at the cost of facing repercussions. Literary criticism, too, has struggled to react to this genre of literature, often finding its tools challenged and frequently invalidated. This genre, despite having received a discriminative treatment, is the focus of this article; we aim to revisit the concept of licentious literature through the following lens, which often goes beyond a strictly literary approach: what is licentious literature and what are its conceptual boundaries, how does this type of literature position itself in relation to official discourse and literary tradition, what is the profile of the writer who embraces such writing, including the profile of the consumer, and what are its modes of circulation, the moment it appears on the local literary scene, the forms it takes, and, last but not least, its epic, thematic, compositional particularities, and its vision over existence?
Keywords: licentious literature, autonomous discourse, countercanon, marginal.
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