An  Alternative Humanity. The Subversion of Postwar Romanian Novel

This article discusses the conditions of representing reality and humanity within the Romanian context during the communist era, together with all its narrative, ideological, social and political implications. In the first part I propose a typology of subversion related to the official ideology of the regime, based on two fundamental criteria: one characterological, the other ideological. In the second part, I will analyze three novels published during the years of relative ideological liberalization (in a flexible understanding, 1970s-1980s). The central argument is that the subversive attitude in Romanian novel writing of the period does not have a political character, but rather an aesthetic one. These novels propose characters and situations that present an alternative humanity (that is, an illusioned, mediocre, antiheroic, problematic, failed, and marginal behavior) compared with the rigid humanity promoted by the Romanian socialism. The subversive character of this type of humanity derives from the fact that it reshapes in a “heretic” way ideologically prefabricated themes such as identity, human condition and memory.

Keywords: Postwar Romanian Novel, Socialist Humanism, Subversion, Aestheticism, Nicolae Breban, Norman Manea, Mircea Nedelciu

• Borbely, Ștefan, “Viața și opiniile lui Zacharias Lichter” / “The Life and The Opinions of Zacharias Lichter”. Coord. Ion Pop. Dicționar analitic de opere literare românești, Ediție definitivă, Vol. II. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2007: 1081.
• Breban, Nicolae. Bunavestire / The Annunciation. Ed. a IIa. București Albatros, 1994.
• Cordoș, Sanda. “Postfață – Un roman fără vârstă” / Afterword – A timeless novel. Gabriela Adameșteanu. Drumul egal al fiecărei zile (roman), Ed. a V-a. Iași: Polirom, 2008.
• — “Îngereasa cu pălărie verde” / A woman Angel with a Green Hat. Coord. Ion Pop. Dicționar analitic de opere literare românești, Ediție definitivă, Vol. II. ClujNapoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2007: 432.
• Crăciun, Gheorghe. Doi într-o carte… ( fără a-l mai socoti pe autorul ei) / Two in a Book… (Without Counting its Author). Cluj-Napoca: Grinta, 2003.
• Cristescu, Maria Luiza. “Arta ca ipoteză de viaţă și romanul ca ipoteză de roman / Art as Life and the Novel as Novel Hypothesis”. Steaua. Nr. 9/septembrie (1983): 51.
• Dobrescu, Caius. Modernitatea ultimă / The Last Modernity. București: Univers, 1999.
• Dumitriu, Dana. “Norman Manea, Captivi” / “Norman Manea – Captives”. Argeș. Nr. 2/februarie (1971): 1011.
• Enescu, Radu. “Captivii” / “The Captives”. Familia. Nr. 5/mai (1971): 4.
• Manea, Norman. Captivi / Captives. București: Cartea Românească, 1970.
• Manea, Norman. Casa Melcului / Snail’s House. București: Hasefer, 1999.
• Manolescu, Nicolae. Arca lui Noe / Noe’s Ark. București: Gramar, 2001. Martin, Mircea. “Despre estetismul socialist” / “On Socialist Aestheticism”. România literară. Nr. 23/16-22 iunie (2004)
• Nedelciu, Mircea. Zmeura de câmpie / Raspberry of the Field. Ed. a II-a. București: Compania, 2005.
• Negrici, Eugen. Literatura română sub comunism – Proza / Romanian Literature under Communism – The Proze. Ediția a II-a. București: Fundația Pro, 2006.
• Pavel, Laura. Antimemoriile lui Grobei / The Anti – memoirs of Grobei. București: Ideea Europeană, 2004.
• Perian, Gheorghe, Scriitori români postmoderni / Postmodern Romanian Writers. București: Editura Didactică și Pedagogică, 1996.
• Robbe-Grillet, Allan. Pentru un nou roman / For a New Novel. Traducere de Ioan Pop Curșeu. Cluj-Napoca: Tact, 2007.
• Vancea, Viola. “Fericirea lui Sisif ” / ”Sisyphus Happiness”. România literară. Nr. 15/22 aprilie (1971): 10.

The Positive Periphery. Three ways of dealing with the complex of the “margin” in the Romanian literature of the 1990s and 2000s – with three case studies

This paper explores the relationship between the peripheral cultural spaces and the center of a cultural world by focusing on the relationship between the writer or creator who lives in such a peripheral space and the cultural society of the “center”. While the complex of the “margin” is a wide-spread complex in the Romanian culture of the last three decades and the label of “marginality” is associated with strong negative connotations, this rule has several notable exceptions. There are circumstances in which the margin and marginality can become a positive factor in the life and creation of a writer. The paper submits to the attention of the reader three case studies from the recent history of the Romanian literature that support the argument of a “positive periphery” – or a “positive marginality”. The conclusive part of the article presents the potential advantages or the “positive sides” of this marginality in the creative life of a writer and in his/her relationship with the “center” of the cultural and social world. The paper is part of a research project financed by the Romanian Academy.

Keywords: Center and periphery; contemporary Romanian literature; narrative fiction of the 1990s; Positive periphery; Positive marginality

• Ciocârlie, Livius Bătrânețe și moarte în mileniul trei, București, Humanitas, 2005
• Florian, Filip, Degete mici, Polirom, Iași, 2005
• Florian, Filip, Florian, Matei, Băiuțeii, Polirom, Iași, 2006
• Florian, Filip Ziua regelui, Polirom, Iași, 2008
• Florian, Filip Toate bufnițele, Polirom, Iași, 2012
• Martin, Mircea Generație și creație, Editura Pentru Literatură, București, 1969
• Mușina, Alexandru, Scrisorile unui fazan, Chișinău, Cartier, 2006
• Mușina, Alexandru, Scrisorile unui geniu balnear, Brașov, Aula, 2007
• „Alexandru Mușina, Scrisorile unui geniu balnear (fragment)”, în Observator cultural, Nr. 679, iunie 2013.

Types of Representing the Communism: The Dystopian Strategy

The article’s premise is that there are three tipologies of representing the communist past in the Romanian post-communist novel. The article focuses on the first typology, describes its main features, and then concentrates on an emblematic example of the first representation, Bujor Nedelcovici’s The Second Messenger. The main features are: the great appeal for satire and dystopia, the emphasis on memory, morality and the dialectics between truth and oblivion imposed by the totalitarian world upon the protagonist in these dystopian novels.

Keywords: dystopian fiction, typologies of representation, the communist past, Bujor Nedelcovici, satire, antihegemonic discourse.

• Cesereanu, Ruxandra, ”Securitate in Romanian Contemporary Narrative: a Communist Dystopia”, Transylvanian Review, XVII, 3, 2013, pp. 170-179.
• Creţu, Bogdan, Utopia negativă în literatura română / Anti-utopia in Romanian Literature, București, Editura Cartea Românească, 2008
• Cordoș, Sanda, Literatura între revoluţie și reacţiune. Problema crizei în literatura română și rusă a secolului XX / Literature between Revolution and Reactionism. The Crisis in Twentieth Century Romanian and Russian Literature, Cluj-Napoca, Biblioteca Apostrof, 1999
• Cordoș, Sanda, În lumea nouă/ In the New World, ClujNapoca, Editura Dacia, 2003
• Dicţionarul cronologic al romanului românesc (19902000)/ The Chronological Dictionary of the Romanian Novel (1990-2000), Academia Română, Institutul de lingvistică și istorie literară „Sextil Pușcariu”, ClujNapoca, Editura Academiei Române, 2011
• Dicţionar analitic de opere literare românești / The Analytical Dictionary of Romanian Literary Works, coord. Ion Pop, Cluj-Napoca, Casa Cărţii de Știinţă, 2007.
• Gottlieb, Erika, Dystopian Fiction East and West. Universe of Terror and Trial, London, Mc-GillQueen’s University Press, 2001.
• Kovacevic, Natasa Narrating Post-Communism. Colonial Discourse and Europe’s Borderline Civilization, New York, Routledge, 2008.
• Kovač, Nikola, Le Roman politique. Fictions du totalitarisme. Suivi de Le Cannibalisme ideologique, Preface de Tiphaine Samoyault, Paris, Éditions Michalon, 2002.
• Milosz, Czeslaw, The Captive Mind, Vintage International, 1990
• Nedelcovici, Bujor, Al doilea mesager / The Second Messenger, București, Editura Eminescu, 1991
• Nedelcovici, Bujor, Aici și acum/ Here and Now, Editura All, 1998
• Orwell, George, O mie nouă sute optzeci și patru / Nineteenth Eighty-Four, Traducere de Mihnea Gafiţa, Prefaţă de Vladimir Tismăneanu, Iași, Polirom, 2002
• Orwell, George, Nineteenth Eighty-Four, London, 1949, Secker & Warburg Rădulescu, Carmen-Ligia, Bujor Nedelcovici: utopia realităţii și realitatea ficţiunii/ Bujor Nedelcovici: the utopia of the real and the reality of fiction, București, 2003, Fundaţia Luceafărul
• Rothberg, Michael, Traumatic Realism. The Demands of Holocaust Representation, University of Minnesota Press, 2000 « Secolul 21 », Filmul, 10-12, 2001

The Beginning of an Euphemism in Romanian Communist Propaganda about Literature and Culture: the “Socialist Humanism” (1961-1965)

This study aims to investigate a few coordinates about the functions of the “euphemism” in the Romanian communist propaganda between 1960 and 1979. The main goal is to observe the uses of the “Humanist Socialism”. In our opinion, this so called noble notion began to be employed as a soft alternative to the radical “Socialist Realism”, which dominated the cultural debates in the 1950. But, changing the word was not supposed to shift the perspective. The strategy integrated in the communist school of diversions. The senses of a highly rated concept were confiscated by the authorities in order to disguise a political state of fact. In our point of view, that was the persistence and revival of Marxist-Leninist ideology after 1965 (The 9th Congress of The Romanian Communist Party), after 1971 (the so called July Theses), concluding with Nicolae Ceausescu’s brochure Umanismul Socialist (The Socialist Humanism, 1979). All in all, this euphemistic method of manipulation planned to hide that communist regime was an anti-humanitarian one.

Keywords: communist regime, propaganda, Socialist Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, euphemism.

• Acad. Mihail Ralea, T. Herseni, O nouă armă de luptă pe frontul ideologic (A New Weapon in the Ideological Front), în „Contemporanul“, nr. 90 (762), vineri, 19 mai 1961, p. 1.
• Carp Dimov, Spre un nou umanism (Towards a New Humanism), în „Naţiunea” (ziar de informaţie, atitudine și reportaj, director: G. Călinescu), anul II, nr. 453, duminică, 28 septembrie 1947, p. 1.
• N. S. Hrușciov, Raportul de activitate al C.C. al P.C.U.S. prezentat la Congresul al XXII-lea al Partidului Comunist al Uniunii Sovietice: 17 octombrie 1961 (Activity Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the USSR for the 22 Congress of the Soviet Communist Party), București, Editura Politică, 1961.
• Liviu Maliţa, Ceaușescu, critic literar (Ceaușescu, Literary Critic), Editura Vremea, 2007.
• Eugen Negrici, Poezia unei religii politice (The Poetry of a Politic Religion), București, Editura Fundaţiei PRO, 1995.
• Marian Popa, Istoria literaturii române de azi pe mâine (The History of Romanian Literature from Hand to Mouth), versiune revizuită și augmentată, vol. II, București, Editura Semne, 2009.
• Mihail Parhomenko, Educaţia estetică (The Aesthetic Education), în „Contemporanul”, nr. 5 (747), vineri, 3 februarie 1961, p. 7.

Beyond the canonical debate

This paper aims to define the theoretical framework of the American canonical debate that goes beyond the initial, already clichéistic and arid, cultural war between the liberal pluralist revisionists and the conservative supporters of the aesthetic literary canon. The paper also tries to highlight the conceptual and theoretical advantages of Western analytical directions, legitimated by sociology and pragmatism, that focus on the rehabilitation of the literary canons.

Keywords: canonical debate, cultural war, literary canon, pragmatism, revisionism, hypercanon

• Bennett, William J., To Reclaim a Legacy. A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education, National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington D.C., 1984
• Bloom Allan, Criza spiritului american [The Closing of the American Mind], traducere și note de Mona Antohi, Editura Humanitas, București, 2006
• Bloom, Harold, The Western Canon. The Books and School of Ages, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1994
• Graff, Gerald, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1992
• Guillory, John, Cultural Capital. The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1993
• Kermode, Frank, The Art of Telling. Essays on Fiction, Harvard University Press, 1983; History and Value, Oxford University Press, 1988; Pleasure and Change. The Aesthetics of Canon, with commentaries by Geoffrey Hartman, John Guillory, Carey Perloff, edited and introduced by Robert Alter, Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Kolbas E. Dean, Critical Theory and the Literary Canon, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2001
• Morrissey, Lee (ed.), Debating the Canon. A Reader from Addison to Nafisi, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005
• Nemoianu, Virgil, Bătălia canonică – de la critica americană la cultura română [The Canonical Battle – from American Criticism to Romanian Culture], în „România literară”, nr. 41, anul XXIII, joi, 11 octombrie 1990
• Saussy, Haun (ed.), Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, The John Hopkins University Press, 2006
• Takaki, Ronald (ed.), Debating Diversity: Clashing Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002.
• van Halberg, Robert (ed.), Canons, The University Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1984

From Social Memory to Literary Representation: the Novel of Transition in Post-communist Romania

The author aims to provide a brief survey on the so called “novels of transition” in post-communist Romania, focusing on fictional works published in the mid-2000. Although these novels do not establish a genre, but merely a functional category, they share some common thematic and structural characteristic. Among these, one must note not only the satirical tone, but also the questioning of social solidarity and shared past. Eventually these novels reflect how collective clichés are codified on a cultural level, through the literary process.

Keywords: post-communism, Romanian literature, novels of transition, social memory, literary representation

• Assmann, Aleida, Memory, Individual and Collective, in Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly (eds.), The Oxford Hanbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 210-226
• Cordoș, Sanda, Lumi din cuvinte. Reprezentări și identități în literatura română postbelică / Worlds in Words. Representations and Identities in Postwar Romanian Fiction, București, Editura Cartea Românească, 2012
• Florian Filip, Degete mici / Little Fingers, Iași, Polirom, 2005. English traslation by Alistair Ian Blyth, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009
• Ghiță Roxana, Poetica și poietica revolutiei. De la romantismul german la anul 1989 în romanul contemporan din România și din Germania/ The poetics of Revolution in the Contemporary Romanian and German Novel: from German Romanticism to the Year 1989, Muzeul Național al Literaturii Române, București, 2013
• Ilis, Florina, Cruciada copiilor/ Children Crusade,București, Cartea Românească, 2007
• Lungu Dan, Sunt o babă comunistă!/ I’m an Old Communist Hag!, ediția a III-a, Iași, Polirom, 2011
• Mironescu, Andreea, Confruntarea cu memoria în ficțiunea contemporană din România/ Dealing with in Memory in Romanian Post-communist Fiction, „Philologica Jassyensia”, An X, Nr. 1 (19), 2014, p. 413-417
• Neumann, Birgit, The Literary Representation of Memory, in Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning (eds.), Media and Cultural Memory/ Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung, Berlin- New York, De Gruyter, 2008, p. 333-343
• Simuț Andrei, Despre romanul “Venea din Timpul diez”. Un interviu cu Bogdan Suceavă / About the Novel ‘Coming from an Off-Key Time’. .An Interview with Bogdan Suceavă, link http://atelier.liternet.ro/articol/9010/Andrei-Simut-Bogdan-Suceava/Despre-romanul-Venea-din-timpul-diez.html, access date 01.04.15
• Suceavă, Bogdan, Venea din timpul diez/ Coming From an Off-Key Time, Iași, Polirom, 2004. English traslation by Alistair Ian Blyth, Northwestern University Press, 2011
• Suceavă, Bogdan, Când discutăm despre ficțiunea politică?/ When shall we talk about political fiction?, „Observator cultural”, nr. 256/ 2005, http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Cind-discutam-despre-fictiunea-politica*articleID_12557-articles_details.html access date 01.04.15

”Authenticity”and National Identity in the Interwar Romanian Culture: From Meaningful to Meaningless Discourses 

An insightful debate of the interwar period, in the Romanian as well as in the cultural European space, took place around the many-sided concept of ”authenticity”. Literary criticism has generally taken into account its psychological and narrative dimensions, emphasizing on such notions as intuition, involuntary memory, unconscious, stream of consciousness, interior monologue. This paper is focused on the non-, or more-than-literary aspects, such as the cultural, the ethnological, and the political, also massively present in the interwar cultural journalism. „Authenticity” seems more and more rooted in the issue of collective, i.e. national, identity, which gives rise to a large spectrum of discourses, from the philosophically informed to the theoretically naive or politically aggressive, from Mircea Eliade and Lucian Blaga to Emil Cioran or Constantin Noica. The hollow space within this ”auratic” concept was unveiled by such critics as the young N. Steinhardt or Eugen Ionescu, in its very heyday.

Keywords: identity, authenticity, nationalism, deconstructionism

• Acterian 1933: Arșavir Acterian, O boală nouă: autenticitatea, „Axa”, 30 aprilie 1933, nr. 11.
• Adorno 1973: Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, Translated by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will, Evanston, Northwetern University Press.
• Blaga 1937: Lucian Blaga, Elogiul satului românesc, București, Editura Cartea Românească, .
• Blaga 1944: Lucian Blaga, Trilogia culturii, București, Editura Fundația Regală pentru Literatură și Artă.
• Călinescu 1936: G. Călinescu, Cronica literară, în „Adevărul literar și artistic”, 24 mai 1936, nr. 807.
• Cioran 1933: Emil Cioran, Revenirea la elementar, „Vremea”, 25 decembrie 1933, nr. 318.
• Comarnescu 1994: Petru Comarnescu, Jurnal (1931-1937), Iași, Editura Institutul European.
• Costin-Deleanu 1933: Paul Costin-Deleanu, Structura spirituală a curentului 48-ist, „Floarea de Foc”, 25 martie 1933, nr. 1.
• Crainic 1940: Nichifor Crainic, În Germania academică, „Gândirea”, decembrie 1940, nr. 10.
• Eliade 1933: Mircea Eliade, O convertire la românism, „Cuvântul”, 22 septembrie 1933, nr. 3012.
• Eliade 1934: Mircea Eliade, Oceanografie, cu un desen inedit de Marcel Iancu, București, Editura Cultura Poporului.
• Eliade 1999-2000: „Dosarul” Eliade, vol. II-III, Cuvânt înainte şi culegere de texte de Mircea Handoca, București, Editura Curtea Veche.
• Ilovici 1934: Mihail Ilovici, Negativismul tinerei generații, București, Editura Gruparea Intelectuală Litere.
• Ionescu 1933: Eugen Ionescu, Originalitate și pașoptism, „Floarea de foc”, 25 martie 1933, nr. 1.
• Ionescu 1991: Eugen Ionescu, Nu, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas.
• Jebeleanu 1933: Eugen Jebeleanu, Săptămâna literară, „România literară”, 8 aprilie 1933, nr. 60.
• Marin 1997: Vasile Marin, Crez de generație, Cuvânt înainte de Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Prefață de Nae Ionescu, biografia lui Vasile Marin de Mihail Polihroniade, Ediție îngrijită și postfață de Radu-Dan Vlad, București, Editura Magadahanda.
• Noica 1940: Constantin Noica, Elogiul vieții, „Universul literar”, 21 septembrie 1940, nr. 39.
• Petrescu 1936: Camil Petrescu, Teze și antiteze, București, Editura Cultura națională
• Polihroniade 1933: M. Polihroniade, Convertirea d-lui Mircea Eliade la românism (nesemnat), „Axa”, 19 septembrie 1933, nr. 18.
• Ralea 1924: Mihai Ralea, Europeism și tradiționalism, „Viața românească”, 1924, nr. 3.
• Schifirneț 2007: Constantin Schifirneț, Formele fără fond, un brand românesc, București, Editura comunicare.ro.
• Steinhardt 2008: N. Steinhardt (Antisthius), În genul… tinerilor, Ediție îngrijită, note, studiu introductiv, referințe critice și indici de George Ardeleanu, repere biobibliografice de Virgil Bulat, Iași, Editura Polirom.
• Streinu 1968: Vladimir Streinu, Pagini de critică literară, vol. I Marginalia, eseuri, București, Editura Pentru Literatură.
• Vojen 1933: Ioan Victor Vojen, Eroarea intelectualilor, „Axa, 6 septembrie 1933”, nr. 17.
• Vulcănescu 1996: Mircea Vulcănescu, Dimensiunea românească a existenţei, Vol. III Către fiinţa spiritualităţii românești, Selecţia textelor, note și comentarii de Marin Diaconu și Zaharia Balica, București, Editura Eminescu.

Past and Future. Panait Istrati par lui-même

This study sets to investigate an important node of implications in Panait Istrati’s biography and work, by starting from his first book published in Romanian (Trecut și viitor / Past and Future, 1925), at a time when he was already known as a successful French writer. While we trace his formative path and his idea of art, we also intend to debunk the myth of the genuine, pure author, which tampered with the reception of his writings in Romania. Essentially hostile against the men of letters, in whom he saw a handful of manufacturers, the self-taught plebeian Istrati was in fact a coherent intellectual and an artist with a plan, who had well-assimilated readings and a marked awareness of his writing. Far from being naïve, the cohesion of his biographical and creative selves heralded the existentially committed poetics of authenticity of the likes of Camil Petrescu and Mircea Eliade.

Keywords: autobiography, authenticity, literary discontent, artistic literature vs. committed literature, humanism, marginality

• * * * Caiete critice, nr. 3-4/1985.
• * * * Correspondance intégrale Panaït Istrati – Romain Rolland. 1919-1935, Canevas éditeur, Paris, 1989.
• Coman, Viorel, Provincia magna, Muzeul Brăilei şi Editura Istros, Brăila, 2013.
• Constantinescu, Pompiliu, Opere şi autori, Editura Ancora, S. Benvenisti & Co, Bucureşti, 1928.
• Iorgulescu, Mircea, Celălalt Istrati, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2004.
• Iorgulescu, Mircea, Panait Istrati nomadul nestatornic. Viaţa, opera, aventurile – legende şi adevăruri, Editura Karta Graphic, Ploieşti, 2011.
• Istrati, Panait, Opere (vol. I şi II), Ediţie îngrijită, note şi comentarii de Teodor Vârgolici, Introducere de Eugen Simion, Editura Academiei Române, Editura Univers Enciclopedic, Bucureşti, 2003.
• Istrati, Panait, Trei decenii de publicistică, Vol. I: Scăpare de condei, 1906-1916; Vol. II: Între banchet şi ciomăgeală, 1919-1929, Ediţie îngrijită de Ion Ursulescu, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2004-2005.
• Jutrin, Monique, Panaït Istrati. Un chardon déraciné (deuxième édition), Éditions L’échappé, Montreuil-Paris, 2014.
• Oprea, Al., Panait Istrati: dosar al vieţii şi al operei, Editura Minerva, Bucureşti, 1984.
• Raydon, Edouard, Panaït Istrati, vagabond de génie, Éditions Municipales, Paris, 1968.
  Talex, Al., Panait Istrati, Editura Vremea, Bucureşti, 1944.

Tudor Vianu’s stylistic mutation

The present study analyzes the factors and conditions, both theoretical and institutional, of Tudor Vianu’s focalization upon stylistics during the 50s. Our main argument is that Vianu’s „stylistic mutation” was not produced by a logical evolution of his thought, but rather triggered, within the political-cultural climate of Socialist Realism, by the lack of other intellectual options in the given context and the desire to provide certain de-ideologized grounds for our literary history. The study also explores the impact and consequences of the Romanian postwar „school of stylistics” and points out the strategic alliance Vianu bridged, in this respect, between literary studies and linguistics.

Keywords: aesthetics, literary stylistics, linguistics, Socialist Realism, formalism

• Mioara Avram (ed.), History of Romanian Linguistics, București, Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1978
• Sorin Alexandrescu, Identity within rupture. Post-war Romanian mentalities, București, Univers, 2000
• Ileana Oancea, History of Romanian Stylistics, București, Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1988.
• Virgil Nemoianu, Inner Archipelago. Memorialistic essays (1940-1975), Timișoara, Amarcord, 1994
• The ”Iorgu Iordan” Linguistic Institute from Bucharest. 50 years of existence (1949-1999), București, Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 1998.

Naguib Mahfouz’s Fiction Between Allegory and Realism

Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian writer who was awarded, in 1988, the Nobel Prize for Literature (being the first Arab author to win this prestigious recognition), includes in the great majority of his novels different aspects that have to be interpreted taking into consideration the implications of allegory, on the one hand, and of realism, on the other. Therefore, we can easily notice that his novels, from Rhadopis of Nubia (1943) to Arabian Nights and Days (1981) or Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985), even if placed in distant epochs, are always expressing the most important preoccupations of contemporary Oriental societies, especially those of Egyptian world, the author’s native land. His masterpiece, The Children of Gebelawi (1959), creates a unique kind of “family portrait”, but expresses, in fact, the fundamental truth of the Oriental culture and of our nowadays world: Gebelawi and his children are, in fact, Egyptian representations of contemporary Cain, Abel, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. Banned throughout the Arab world for the alleged blasphemy (the allegorical portrayal of God and the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam), this novel represents Mahfouz attempt to write against all possible political or religious patterns and to underline, in his specific way, the great truth of literature, the only truth this Egyptian writer always tried to express.

Keywords: allegory, realism, postcolonial culture, Oriental literature, 20th century novel, narrative discourse.

• Naghib Mahfuz, Akhenaton, cel ce sălăşluieşte în adevăr / Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth. Traducere de Mihai Pătru, Humanitas, 2006.
• Naghib Mahfuz, Rhadopis din Nubia / Rhadopis of Nubia. Traducere de Irina Vainovski-Mihai, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas Fiction, 2011.
• Naghib Mahfuz, O mie şi una de nopţi şi zile / Arabian Nights and Days. Traducere de Mihai Pătru, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas Fiction, 2008.
• Naghib Mahfuz, Băieţii de pe strada noastră / Children of Gebelawi. Traducere, prefaţă şi note de Nicolae Dobrişan, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2009.
• Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage Books, 1994.
• Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, 1978.
• Edward Said, Between Worlds. A Memoir, in „London Review of Books”, May, 1998.

Local and Global Impact Zones in the Campus Novel: Showcasing Malcolm Bradbury’s Cuts

In its already established form, the campus novel explores the potentially enriching cultural exchange between faculty members. Malcolm Bradbury’s novels explore the comical experiences of people who leave the comfort zone of their idealistic environment, to embark, usually imbued with humanistic ideas and ideals, on a different experience which, albeit based on an assumed familiarity with a new space, eventually proves to be disquieting and tormenting.

The current paper investigates the ways in which the experience of a typical campus novel character ranges across the university cultural space and the world of hard finance, to address cross-referenced issues that impact, perhaps more poignantly at present, on the interaction between faculty members and what they took to be ‚the world out there’.

Keywords: Malcom Bradbury, Cuts, faculty members, cultural exchange, hard finance

• Bakhtin, M.Mikhail 1994: The Dialogic Imagination.Four Essays. (original 1988) Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Bradbury, Malcolm 2005: A Dog Engulfed by Sand. Online: March 2014. <www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1978nov-00051?View=PDFPages>.
• Bradbury, Malcolm 1991 (3 February): ‚All Aboard for the New Europe’: The New York Times on the Web: March 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/specials/bradbury-neweuro.html>.
• Bradbury, Malcolm 1987: Cuts. London: Arrow Books.
• Bradbury, Malcolm 1988a (17 July): ‚If Your Books Are Funny, Please Tell Me Where.’: The New York Times on the Web: March 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/specials/bradbury-funny.html>.
• Bradbury, Malcolm 1988b (11 December): ‚Mrs. Thatcher’s Children.’: The New York Times on the Web: March 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/specials/bradbury-thatcher.html>.
• Dodsworth, Martin (ed.) 1994: The Penguin History of Literature: The Twentieth Century. London: Penguin.
• Lodge, David 1992: ‚Malcolm Bradbury’. In ‚Contemporary Writers’. London: Book Trust in conjunction with the British Council.
• Lodge, David 1971: The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism. London: Routledge.
• Scholes, Robert E. 1967: The Fabulators. New York and London: Oxford University Press. Weedon, Chris 1999: Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell.

The Spirit of the Age: The Imaginary of Gender and Romance in Charlotte Turner Smith

This article will focus on the problematics of gender culture and its symbiotic relationship with romance construction in Charlotte Turner Smith’s work and on the author’s direct relation with the period and space she lived in. Thus, I will try to emphasize the way in which Smith’s writing meets the general expectations of her time upon which her career and her family depended, but also how she ingeniously challenges a way of life which reduces women to silent, ornamental trophies, just as she refused to identify herself with a long-suffering wife or a silly lady novelist.

Keywords: Gender, Romance, Smith, Romanticism, Sensibility

• Blank, Antje. “Charlotte Smith”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2003; last revised 30 November. [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4112, accessed 20 April 2015.]
• Brownstein, Rachel M. Becoming a Heroine: Reading about Women in Novels. New York: Viking, 1982.
• Corrigan, Philip and Derek Sayer. The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.
• Curran, Stuart. “Introduction”. The Poems of Charlotte Smith. Women Writers in English 1350–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. New York: St. Martin’s. Press, 1998.
• Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.
• Hagg, Tomas. The Novel in Antiquity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
• Knowles, Claire. Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition, 1780–1860: The Legacy of Charlotte Smith. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009.
• Kunitz, Stanley and Howard Haycraft, Eds. British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1952.
• Labbe, Jacqueline M. Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism (The Enlightenment World). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Labbe, Jacqueline M. Charlotte Smith: Romanticism, Poetry, and the Culture of Gender. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
• Lovell, Terry. Consuming Fiction. London: Verso, 1987.
• Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Woman Novelist. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
• Stanton, Judith Phillips. “Introduction”. The Old Manor House. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Wikborg, Eleanor. “Political discourse versus sentimental romance: Ideology and genre in Charlotte Smith’s Desmond (1792.)” English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 78. 6 (1997).
• Zimmerman, Sarah M. “Charlotte Smith”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. October 2007. http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/25/101025790/.