Limbă, Literatură, Folclor

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52505/llf.2025.2.04

Abstract: In this article, I aimed to highlight that the novel Baraj by the Romanian writer Marcu Mihail Deleanu can be considered a total novel. First of all, at the level of denotation, it proves to be a “classic” novel, with people and events from immediate reality. At the level of the authorial message, it reveals itself as an introspective novel, through the confessional dimension discreetly camouflaged in the narrative-dialogue structure constantly sprinkled with digressions, philological notes and technical explanations. In the profound dimension of writing seen as interaction and self-communication, it is projected as a narratological novel about the place of the author in his own writing and in relation to the world. Last but not least, Baraj is a meta-novel, conceived as a novel about writing a novel, about the process of stalling language and metamorphosis of amorphous linguistic matter into art. Hence the postmodern dimension of Deleanu’s novel, in which the construction of the dam coincides with the very construction site of writing.

Keywords: Marcu Mihail Deleanu, dam, writing, meta-novel, construction site, scriptor, narrator.