Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Lê: Imagining the Ideal Reader uncovers the primary textual relationship that Linda Lê (1963- ), the most prolific Francophone author of the Vietnamese diaspora, fosters with a literary precursor of Austrian descent: the feminist writer-in-exile, Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). This study offers an overdue exploration of the notably European roots of Lê's writerly formation. It traces an unexamined feminist import in her work to a sixteen-year inter- and intra-textual engagement with Bachmann and positions the latter as an imagined ideal reader of Lê's oeuvre. Intertextual analyses of Bachmann's post-war novel, Malina, with Lê's literary essays, early fiction, and trilogy, reveal that to overcome the challenges of writing in exile Lê adopts an alternative literary fore-bear of the European tradition.

Alexandra Kurmann researches and lectures in French and Francophone studies at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Weaving of an Intertextual Web
Intertextual Weaving
Appropriation and Substitution
Transformative Imitation
Incorporation
Chapter 1: Tissé avec une patience de Pénélope
Exilic Intersections
Ersatz Homes in Language and Literature
Literary Belonging
Chapter 2: Appropriating the Precursor
Another Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann, an Inferno of Enigmas
J'écris sur la nature du feu
An Antigonean Bachmann
Incorruptible Desire
The Entombed Voice of Female Resistance
Chapter 3: Malina as Textual Genesis
Phantom Literary Origins
Le registre du mythe
Le registre du rêve
Chapter 4: Dead Letters
Fugitive Letters
Writing Back to Bachmann
Chapter 5: Incorporating the Ideal Reader
Split Selves
The Third Site
Antigone's Doubles
Conclusion: La tâche de l'écrivain
Bibliography
Primary LiteratureWorks by Ingeborg BachmanEnglish TranslationsFrench TranslationsWorks by Linda LêEnglish TranslationsVietnamese TranslationsSecondary Literature