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Avântat, uneori patetic, alteori de un umor casant ce îl prefigurează pe Eugen Ionescu (mai ales în cronicile teatrale), Const. Meletie/ B. Fundoianu arată, deja, în textele sale din 1915-1916 acea uluitoare disponibilitate pentru toate laturile actului artistic care îl va defini până în 1944. În grupajul de mai jos, am selectat o parte dintre contribuțiile sale la cotidianul „Rampa nouă și ilustrată”, din anii 1915-1916. (Ș.F.)

This paper aims to showcase the ways in which the image of Don Juan develops in the Romanian novel of the urban periphery, since the second half of the XIXth century until today. One can notice that, in the novels of social periphery (Elisa sau Don Juanii Bucureștilor by N.D. Popescu, Tinerețea Casandrei by Vasile Demetrius, Diplomatul, tăbăcarul și actrița by Carol Ardeleanu, or in the contemporary Soldații. Poveste din Ferentari by Adrian Schiop), the character preserves his social status, as well as his old power of persuasion. On the other hand, from I.L. Caragialeʼs theatrical work emerges a more plebeian and degenerate Don Juan, taken over by the maestroʼs disciples (Gib Mihăescu, Damian Stănoiu or Mihail Celarianu).

This paper aims to showcase one of the two ways to imagine Bucharest suburbs active in the fiction before the Great War. Based on the narrative strategies of Naturalism, V. Demetrius’ „sympathetic” approach, draping up in tragedy the economic realities of life in the new industrial peripheries, appears to us as basically opposed to I.L. Caragiale’s critical perspective, more focused on the moral and psychological issues of the marginal milieux.

The article is focused on the theoretical distinguo between “slum” and “periphery”, as well as on the representations of these socio-cultural concepts in the Romanian interwar fiction. On the one hand, we should keep in mind that, since the end of the 19th c., the “slum” is imagined both psychologically, as a state of mind, and geo-sociologically, as an earlier stage in the development of Bucharest’s suburban areas. Following in I.L. Caragiale’s footsteps, the “slum” was depicted by such novelists as Mihai Celerianu, Damian Stănoiu, or Gib Mihăescu. On the other hand, the “periphery” represents a space newly created due to the expansion of the city, during industrialization. The social report was the non-literary genre which informed the realist fiction depicting this space and its specific social issues. George Mihail Zamfirescu, Carol Ardeleanu or Constantin Barcaroiu were the most significant novelists who dealt with this topos. This paper also aims to look at the gradual displacement from the cosmic and critical perspective on the “slum” to the compassionate and militant attitude towards the “periphery” and its social problems, in the Romanian interwar fiction.