Legitimizing Mechanisms in Romanian Literary Histories
This paper explores Romanian literary histories in the light of the theoretical acknowledgements of “World Literature”. Its foremost representatives define the international literary space as a competition for universal acknowledgment among nations. The complex dynamic between culture and socio-economic power is responsible for the hierarchical distinction between (semi)peripheral and core literatures. The case of Romanian literature is significant for the East-European struggle to overcome the socio-political delay by manufacturing “great narratives”. The discourse of literary histories, seen, since Herder, as a privileged reflection of the nation’s soul, is contaminated by legitimizing strategies meant to re-locate the (semi)peripheral literatures on the map of world literature. This paper analyzes Nicolae Iorga’s first literary histories at the edge of the twentieth-century, the literary histories of Eugen Lovinescu, Istoria literaturii române contemporane (The History of the Romanian Contemporary Literature), Istoria literaturii române de la începuturi până în prezent, 1941 (The History of Romanian Literature from its Origins to the Present Times) by G. Călinescu emphasizing the compensation strategies meant to surpass the distance between the symbolic prestige of Romanian literature and core literatures.
Keywords: World Literature, literary histories, East European cultures, identity complex, compensatory mechanisms
1. Andrei Terian, Critica de export (Exporting Literary Criticism), Bucureşti, Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2013.
2. The main premises of „World Literature” approach can be found in Pascale Casanova, La République mondiale des lettres, Paris: Seuil, 1999; David Damrosch, What Is World Literature?, Princeton – Oxford: Princeton University, 2013; Franco Moretti, Distant Reading, London-New York, Verso, 2013;
3. Franco Moretti, Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez, London-New York, Verso, 1995;
4. Robert B. Pynsent, “Nineteenth-Century Czech Literary History, National Revival and the Forged Manuscripts”, in History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe. Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, vol. III, edited by Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer, 2007;
5. Alex Drace-Francis, The Making of Modern Romanian Culture. Literacy and the Development of National Identity, London-New York, Tauris Academic Studies, 2006, p. 129.
6. Ibidem, p. 131.
7. Cf. Mircea Martin, G. Călinescu şi complexele literaturii române (G. Călinescu and the Complexes of Romanian Literature), Bucureşti, Albatros, 1981, p. 34.
8. Nicolae Iorga, Istoria literaturii româneşti. Introducere sintetică (Synthetic Introduction to the Romanian Literature), prefaţă, note şi bibliografie de Mihai Ungheanu, 1988, Editura Minerva, Bucureşti, p. 244.
9. E. Lovinescu, Istoria literaturii române contemporane (The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature), Bucureşti, Editura Minerva, 1981. 10. G. Călinescu, Istoria literaturii române de la origini până în prezent (The History of Romanian Literature from its Origins to the Present Times), Bucureşti, ediţia a doua, revăzută şi adăugită, ediţie şi prefaţă de Al. Piru, Minerva, 1982, p. 3.
11. Ibidem, p. 4.
12. A full account of the process of mystification in Călinescu s literary history can be found in Mircea Martin, op. cit., and Andrei Terian, G. Călinescu. A cincea esenţă (G. Călinescu. The Fifth Element), Bucureşti, Cartea Românească, 2009.
