An overview on the 20th-century Central-European novel (original) (raw)

Rethinking Romanian Literature Collectively: The Inter imperial Modern Novel

Transilvania , 2022

The present essay aims at discussing the recent volume Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires (2022) by Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă as a significant contribution to the recent attempts at rethinking Romanian literature. In this regard, the examination of the volume is constantly reckoned in dialogue with some of the previously undertaken projects. The dialogic approach highlights two significant aspects, related to both the volume and the context in which it is received. On the one hand, it shows that the theoretical and methodological framework deployed in the volume can constitute the ground for future studies. On the other hand, it draws attention to the fact the rethinking of Romanian literature has been a collective and gradual endeavor.

"Navigating the Flux: The Many Routes to Romanian Literature" in Cosmin BORZA, Romanita CONSTANTINESCU, Roberto MERLO, Andrei CORBEA-HOIŞIE, Andreea MIRONESCU, Christian MORARU, Andrei TERIAN, "Book review Symposium: Romanian Literature as World Literature"

Philologica Jassyensia, 2018

The aim of this book review symposium is twofold. First, it offers a critical discussion of the volume Romanian Literature as World Literature (edited by Mircea Martin, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian), in relation to other comparative literary histories, on the one hand, and to the Romanian literary historiography, on the other hand. Several critics and scholars of Romanian and comparative literature, as well as two of the RLWL editors, comment on the book. Second, the dossier outlines a methodological debate, as the volume under scrutiny pleads for a paradigm shift in reading national literatures in the broader frame of world literature. Some contributors address key-issues such as “methodological nationalism” in Romanian literary research, the “exportability” of Romanian authors, and the politics of cross-cultural comparison, while others share their own academic experience in teaching Romanian literature as world literature.

New Paradigms in Contemporary Romanian Literary Studies (I)

Revista Transilvania, 2019

This article introduces the first part of the New Paradigms in Contemporary Romanian Literary Studies collective work that Revista Transilvania has set to publish in order to get a better picture on contemporary local literary research. Emanuel Modoc and Ștefan Baghiu argue that there is a paradigm shift at the beginning of the 2000s in Romanian literary theory and literary criticism that has its effects on today’s literary research, and describe the use of quantitative methods, World Literature concepts and transnational studies perspectives in several new research published by young scholars such as Emanuel Modoc, Daiana Gărdan, Ovio Olaru and Snejana Ung. https://revistatransilvania.ro/configurations-of-transnationalism-in-east-central-european-avant-gardes/ https://revistatransilvania.ro/novels-as-big-data-a-genre-centric-approach-to-the-romanian-novel-1900-1940/ https://revistatransilvania.ro/what-is-digital-humanities-and-whats-it-doing-in-romanian-departments/ https://revistatransilvania.ro/the-literature-about-the-former-yugoslavia-in-the-paradigm-of-world-literature/

Romanian Literary Critics, Theoreticians and Historians in the World

World literature studies, 2015

In national historiographies, the inclusion of exile literature is still subject to the concept of the traditional background. This means that it is based on the convention of a unified language, ethnic group, and territory, stemming from the French identity model of État-Nation that was adopted by European cultures in the 18th and 19th centuries. This principle also serves as the basis for another function of the national language: it is the only one that can provide the means of expression for national literature. On the other hand, the events of the 20th century and transition to the new millennium are showing us that cultural reality does not conform to this model. Moreover, the models of globalisation, world literature, and post-colonial studies that came widely into use in recent years challenge the limitations of the single national language principle (monolingualism) in our present world and highlight the problem in studies of the cultural processes in the past. In reality n...

Romanian Literature for the World: A Matter of Property

World Literature Studies, 2015

Starting from the recent developments in the fields of transnational studies and world literature, this article analyses the presence of Romanian literature in the world and its specific manner of relating to the world. Thus, my paper consists of three parts. The first part approaches, in short, the way in which Romanian culture envisaged national literature, world literature, and the relationship between the two over the past two centuries. The second part is an attempt to systematize the manner in which Romanian literature asserted its presence in the world until now, by identifying four successive waves of its dissemination beyond national borders (the avant-garde, the Young Generation, trauma literature, and the comparatist wave). Finally, the third part of the article poses a new approach toward the problem, meant to contribute to a better understanding and, at the same time, an improvement of the presence of Romanian literature in the world.

Hybrid Geographies of Global Genres: The Global Space in the Romanian Modern Novel

Caietele Echinox, 2020

My paper aims to investigate an early phase of the globalization phenomenon as it has manifested in a specific peripheral space, attempting to map, by means of both close and distant reading, how the internalization processes have been mirrored in the modern Romanian novel. The scope of my research revolves around the responses that Romanian literature – a peripheral, minor literature – has had towards transnational or global models, and how the novelistic production of the aforementioned timeframe has metabolised and illustrated the foreign input in our culture. The theoretical framework of the present

Translations and Semi-Peripheral Cultures: Worlding the Romanian Novel in the Modern Literary System

Peter Lang, 2022

Goldiș, Alex, and Ștefan Baghiu, eds. Translations and Semi-Peripheral Cultures: Worlding the Romanian Novel in the Modern Literary System. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022. [introduction manuscript copyright Peter Lang] https://www.peterlang.com/document/1303851 Summary With the acceleration of the globalization process over the last decades, the understanding of translations as privileged forms of cultural interference has constantly advanced. However, a translational approach to national cultures is absent from the concerns of histories of national literatures published to date. The overall objective of the book is to investigate the systemic impact of translations on the evolution of the Romanian novel, from its inception to the present day. This systemic approach consists of a two-fold analysis (quantitative and morphological), while the term ‘evolution’ refers to the development of the phenomenon in relation to the agents that have fashioned its dynamics—not only cultural but also political, social, or economic.

The Rise of Translations: Foreign Novels in Romania in 1877, 1945, and 1989

Transylvanian Review, 2022

Abstract: This article analyzes the growth of translations of novels in Romania in relation to historical events that changed the administrative orientation of Romanian Principalities and the Romanian state within the world system. The data used is an exhaustive account of the ratio of local productions to translations provided by Andrei Terian in 2019. Shifting consequently its subaltern state from Ottoman to Western influence, from Western to Soviet, and from Soviet to Western again, the Romanian administration also ensured the growth of literary translations—at least in respect to novels. This points out to a complex system of legitimation, through which state-building processes are followed by periods of translation growths in order to secure the alignment to the new center of influence. Translations of novels are thus accommodators for new dependencies within the world system. The article also depicts the situation of small cultures and their specific behavior towards translations. Following Franco Moretti’s observation regarding proportions between translations and local production and Sean Cotter’s definition of minor cultures as “translated nations,” this research arrives to the conclusion that the “translated nation” is a stage within semi-peripheral and peripheral literatures when shifting their orientation within the world system.