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This paper makes a case for analyzing the way in which the novel of Communism is approached by Mihai Iovănel in his History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020. This is a topic that was intensely discussed by Romanian literary criticism in Post-communism and represents the weakness of Romanian literature, either by it not being able to give a sufficiently convincing novel, or by not being able to agree upon how this novel should look. Accordingly, the critics had difficulties in labeling any novel that had been published after ‘89s as “the novel of communism.” The first part of the article is a panning of recent discussions about this term in relation to the analysis made by Iovănel in his History. The second part aims to trace out a network of this type of novel in the literatures of Central and Eastern Europe and to try to identify its particularities through a comparative analysis. The last part consists of a study case of the novels Acasă, pe câmpia Armaghedonului [At home, on the Field of Armageddon] by Marta Petreu and Bureți de Fag [Oyster Mushrooms] by Mihai Duțescu. The latter has been published after the History and both novels are analyzed from the perspective of the novel of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to demonstrate that two previously unknown manuscript folios from Mircea Eliade’s youth, which emerged in 2022, are the drafted summaries of his unfinished editorial project Valkyries in the Library. The two folios are, in fact, two lists of article titles Eliade published in Cuvântul (22), Gândirea (2), and Sinteza (1), in 1926-1928. Arranged differently, the feuilletons address topics such the Romanian intellectual, the dependance towards French culture and literature, philology and synthesis, the lack of heroism in Romanian literature, Beatrice and Don Quixote, young writers, literary criticism, philosophy. The tone is polemical and radical, condemning the current state of Romanian literature, advancing the author's views, and urging his contemporaries to take action in order to create fundamental and authentic works. Just as Eliade recalls in his diary, the articles from Cuvântul mentioned in the two folios were a whirlwind, a cavalcade meant to take local culture and erudition by surprise and to change it forever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employed in the study of national or transnational literatures, the relevance of digital humanities, computational analyses, and quantitative sociology can no longer be ignored. In this paper, we aim to argue that, in spite of it still being seen as a niche endeavor, the digital or quantitative study of literature generates paradigmatic shifts in literary scholarship, both in literary criticism and comparative studies. In order to demonstrate this statement, the following study will illustrate how three core principles of digital humanities are actively shaping humanities as we know it. These principles – openness, replicability, and collaboration – challenge the way we understand the role of the literary historian and their „traditional” tasks. To consolidate this argumentation further, we will briefly present an example of how digital humanities start changing the dominant narrative in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The members of the Sibiu Literary Circle coined and disseminated the rather abusive term “pășunism” (from the Romanian word “pășune,” meaning pasture) in order to combat the confusion between ethnic, ethical and aesthetic. In the spirit of Eugen Lovinescu’s literary ideology, this was considered by the Literary Circle as an urgent mission in the context of Romanian literature in the 1940s. Originally intended to ironize (neo)“sămănătorist” or “fascist-sămănătorist” literature, the term “pășunism,” given the thematic aspect which it implies, gained a lax usage. Therefore, rural literature and folklore-inspired literature among others fit in the satirical term’s category. The aim of the following paper is to investigate the origins and manifestations of the anti-ruralist tendencies of the Sibiu Literary Circle in its earlier days, starting from, but not limited to the writings of I. Negoițescu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the present paper is to highlight the relevance of translation in the scholarly endeavour of placing and firmly setting national literature in a wider context, i.e. planetary literature. Moreover, due to its complexity, long tradition, noble endeavour, worldwide mission and overarching goal, translation – as a fourfold process encompassing the linguistic, cultural, interpretive, comparative dimensions, according to Christian Moraru – serves as a most effective connector between words and worlds, in addition to overcoming successive waves regarding the state of “translatability” as Emily Apter scholarly theorized it, from her first thesis “nothing is translatable” to the twentieth thesis “everything is translatable”, where all the intermediary stages, hypotheses, and other theoretical assumptions further investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to discuss two literary representations of postcommunist Romanian emigration to the United States, one of the most understudied routes of migration, in sociological and literary studies alike. Relying on Carine M. Mardorossian’s (2002) research, I understand exile and migrant literature not as taxonomic but as paradigmatic categories. As I show, the paradigmatic difference between them plays out at the level of critical representation, which reveals a subtle, implicit, and rather involuntary critique of North American capitalism and its labor market. My argument is that any critique of capitalism and the labor market is closely connected to downward social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from recent developments in the field of World Literature, but also earlier attempts at mapping local cultural traditions, contexts, and affinities, our proposal attempts to investigate the dominant patterns of cultural criticism within the literary publications active during the interwar period. Using an exhaustive resource of metadata related to the relations between Romanian literature and foreign literatures developed over the span of twenty years, we plot a network abstraction focused on revealing patterns and trends of reception within Romanian cultural magazines. This process of “topic modeling” cultural criticism will serve to illustrate the dominant subject matters present in the Romanian cultural press. Following our data analysis, we will attempt to provide an explanatory model of “theory production” in Romanian literary culture that accounts for the seemingly “ahistorical” nature of autochthonous localizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]