Romanian Literature as World Literature [Hardcover]

Approaching Romanian literature as world literature, this book is a critical-theoretical manifesto that places its object at the crossroads of empires, regions, and influences and draws conclusions whose relevance extends beyond the Romanian, Romance, and East European cultural systems. This intersectional revisiting of Romanian literature is organized into three parts. Opening with a fresh look at the literary ideology of Romania's national poet, Mihai Eminescu, part I dwells primarily on literary-cultural history as process and discipline. Here, the focus is on cross-cultural mimesis, the role of strategic imitation in the production of a distinct literature in modern Romania, and the shortcomings marking traditional literary historiography's handling of these issues. Part II examines the ethno-linguistic and territorial complexity of Romanian literatures or Romanian literature in the plural. Part III takes up the trans-systemic rise of Romanian, Jewish Romanian, and Romanian-European avant-garde and modernism, Socialist Realism, exile and ?migr? literature, and translation.

Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Worlds of Romanian Literature and the Geopolitics of Reading
Christian Moraru (University of North Carolina, Greenboro, USA) and Andrei Terian (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania)

Part I: The Making and Remaking of a World Literature: Revisiting Romanian Literary and Cultural History
1. Mihai Eminescu: From National Mythology to the World Pantheon
Andrei Terian (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania)
2.Aux portes de l'Orient, and Through: Nicolae Milescu, Dimitrie Cantemir, and the Oriental Legacy of Early Romanian Literature
Bogdan Cretu (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania)
3. Soft Commerce and the Thinning of Empires: Four Steps Toward Modernity
Caius Dobrescu (University of Bucharest, Romania)
4. Beyond Natl#—