Alexandra Kurmann - Intertextual weaving in the work of Linda Lê : imagining the ideal reader

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kurmann, Alexandra, author.

Title: Intertextual weaving in the work of Linda L?e: imagining the ideal reader / by Alexandra Kurmann.

Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2016. | Series: After the empire: the francophone world and postcolonial France | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041839 (print) | LCCN 2015048646 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498514866 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781498514873 (Electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: L?e, LindaCriticism and interpretation.

Classification: LCC PQ2672.E1113 Z78 2016 (print) | LCC PQ2672.E1113 (ebook) | DDC 843/.914dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041839

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The financial assistance of an Australian Postgraduate Award supported the research undertaken for this study, and the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne funded a research trip to Europe during which I was able to interview the author, Linda L. Additionally, a Faculty Early Career Researcher Grant from Macquarie University supported the preparation of the manuscript. All of this support has been gratefully received.

My deepest gratitude is expressed to Tess Do and Birgit Lang, whose expertise in Vietnamese-Francophone writing and German exile literature respectively, not only provided me with invaluable insights and guidance over the course of this project, but also fostered in me a love of comparative literature research. I wish to thank Sara Lennox and Jane Bradley Winston for their invaluable readings of the research, as well as the anonymous reader of the manuscript for Lexington Books for their astute observations.

At its core this book is about relationships, real and literary. In my turn I would like to thank those who have helped bring this project to fruition: Kerryellen and Neil Vroman, for their support in all of my academic endeavours; Duane Duncan, for his patience and unfaltering friendship; and my father, Eugen Kurmann. Finally, my wholehearted thanks to Eric Lau for his loving constancy throughout.

Parts of chapter 4 appear under the title, Returned to Sender: Writing Back to a Literary Precursor, in Mlanges pour Anne Freadman, edited by Vronique Duch, Tess Do and Andrea Rizzi, forthcoming from ditions Classiques Garnier.

For Linda L, a forced migrant with a personal history of cultural and linguistic loss, tre le fils de personne, daucune patrie, cest pour [elle] la seule attitude possible (being the child of no one, having no homeland, for [her] is the only possible attitude) to take as a writer.

One of the strongest voices of rebellion in the intertextual chorus of Ls work is that of Ingeborg Bachmann. Providing L with a textual point of anchorage, the Austrian born poet-turned-writer in voluntary exile stands out from Ls other textual kin due to the longevity of the distinctly literary relationship L fosters with her. While Bachmanns parfaite matrise (perfect mastery) of French and Italian certainly aligns her with Cioran and Tsvetaeva,

In a broader sense, the example of the influence of a European, rather than a French or Vietnamese, literary tradition on L encourages researchers of migrant literatures to look further afield for literary connections. Further, that the complex hybridity of Ls work is largely the result of her engagement with writers at the margins of European literatures suggests that hybrid writing extends outside the bounds of postcoloniality or subalternity. Thus, while this study intends to provide a key narrative in the multi-layered story of Ls writerly becoming as fundamentally intertextual in nature,

As arguably the most prolific writer of Vietnamese origin working in France today, L enjoys a flourishing critical appreciation of her oeuvre. Scholarship has focused predominantly on the postcoloniality of Ls writing, addressing the recurrent subject of exile and its related themes of guilt, paternal loss, and trauma in her texts. Although L has written across the genres since her literary debut in 1987, having published short stories, novellas, a play, and literary essays, her novels and in particular her trilogy