Writing in the second degree and its communicational value in poetic discourse

The article takes a look at some poetic strategies pertaining to writing "in the second degree", and their more general implications, mostly from a communicational perspective. The cognitive metaphor of palimpsest covers various forms of rewriting and absorption of discursive otherness. Against this theoretical background, the dialogic-communicative framework is deemed highly adequate for the comparative analysis as a whole and acquires renewed importance in the context of contemporary productions, where ironic double-voicedness, reported discourse, polyphony and intertextuality have become the very texture of poetic discourse. A new reading contract is established by the specificity of postmodern intertextuality, due to its inherent ambivalence towards previous texts. By drawing on examples from the Romanian poets Radu Andriescu, Mircea Cartarescu and Alexandru Musina, I argue that the differential re-enunciation of already codified texts and discourses relies, for its illocutionary and communicational impact, on the deliberate vacillation between pastiche and parody.