Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai. Philologia (Dec 2021)

BOOK REVIEW: IOANA BOT, "ICOANE ȘI PRIVAZURI: 7 STUDII DESPRE FIGURALITATEA LITERARĂ”, CLUJ-NAPOCA: CASA CĂRȚII DE ȘTIINȚĂ, 2021, 217 P.

  • Raluca DEACONEASA

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 66, no. 4

Abstract

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Figurality is an essential dimension of literature: it transmits an experience and, at the same time, it encapsulates the endless expressive potential of language. The studies included in Professor Ioana Bot’s latest book, published under the title Icoane și privazuri: 7 studii despre figuralitatea literară [Icons and Frames: 7 Studies on Literary Figurality], approach the body of literature as a figure of the ceaseless signification process it both energizes and disrupts. Ioana Bot proposes a complex and well-structured analysis of the expressive powers of literature, whose very figurality precludes the fixation or exhaustion of its meanings. This is not only a study that brings to light the mechanisms through which literature and its readings resume the original scene of Christian communion, but also a thorough inquiry into the figural as that topos that mediates the distance between revelation and concealment, or between transparency and obscurity of meaning.