Ill Bodies, Diseased Texts: Writing and Reading as Contamination in Francisco Delicado's Portrait of Lozana and Juan Goytisolo's The Virtues of the Solitary Bird

This article is a reading of Francisco Delicado's novel in the light of Juan Goytisolo's, which centers οn the discourse of contagion understood as a viral relationship with the text both for the reader and for the writer. This metaphor places the analysis beyond the traditional view of literature as a terrain for influence. Here notions of contagion and contamination that invade the writing and reading process underline the material aspects of two porous texts. It is in the tension between openness and closure that the link between disease and the process of writing as contamination lies, rendering the texts both a space of community, and a fragile body that can be "penetrated" (and modified) by readers. Ιn both cases, illness is omnipresent both at the content leνel and in the materiality of writing, which, in turn, sets in motion the recuperation of texts in constant dialogue