Mircea Cărtărescu, Travesti [Travesty]

Letitia Guran (Longwood College)

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Ed. by Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.4: Romanian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Maria Sabina Draga Alexandru (University of Bucharest), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Calin Andrei Mihailescu (University of Western Ontario)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1994

Places

Romania (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Travesty

Victor, the narrator, is fascinated by Lulu, who, while disguised as a girl during a summer camp celebration, forces Victor to touch him intimately, and thus pushes him to choose his sexual identity as a man. The process, which symbolically stands for a journey into maturity, also involves taking hold of a set of haunting memories, which have thus far made Victor asocial, while also granting him access to the realms of unbounded imagination. Along with coming to terms with his own sexuality, Victor’s quest for self-definition consists of a successful, though painful, harnessing of his creative impulses into instruments for probing into the Truth. Sexuality and intellect, body and brain, are interconnected in Victor’s hermaphrodite nature, until the moment he figures out…

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794 words

Citation: Guran, Letitia. "Travesti". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 June 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30164, accessed 03 April 2025.]