Romanian Literature as World Literature

Mircea Martin is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and a prominent figure of post-World War II East European literary criticism, theory, and comparative studies. A corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, he is Editor-in-Chief of Euresis: Romanian Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies and president of the Romanian Association of General and Comparative Literature. His latest book is Radicalism and Nuance (2015).Christian Moraru is Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Cosmodernism: American Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary (2011) and Reading for the Planet: Toward a Geomethodology (2015).Andrei Terian is Dean of Faculty of Letters and Arts and Professor of Romanian Literature in the Department of Romance Studies of Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. He is also a senior researcher with the G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy. His latest books include the co-authored reference series General Dictionary of Romanian Literature (7 volumes, 2004-2009) and Chronology of Romanian Literary Life: 1944-1964 (10 volumes, 2010-2013).

• ContributorsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Worlds of Romanian Literature and the Geopolitics of ReadingChristian 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 History1. Mihai Eminescu: From National Mythology to the World PantheonAndrei 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 LiteratureBogdan 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 Nation Building: Literary History as Transnational Geolocation Alex Goldis (Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania)5. After “Imitation”: Aesthetic Intersections, Geocultural Networks, and the Rise of Modern Romanian Literature Carmen Musat (University of Bucharest, Romania)Part II: Literature in the Plural6. Reading Microliterature: Language, Ethnicity, PolyterritorialityMircea A. Diaconu (Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Romania)7. Trees, Waves, Whirlpools: Nation, Region, and the Reterritorialization of Romania’s Hungarian LiteratureImre József Balázs (Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, Romania)8. Cosmopolites, Deracinated, étranjuifs: Romanian Jews in the International Avant-GardeOvidiu Morar (Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Romania)9. Communicating Vessels: The Avant-Garde, Antimodernity, and Radical Culture in Romania between World War I and World War IIPaul Cernat (University of Bucharest, Romania)Part III: Over Deep Time, across Long Space10. Temporal Webs of World Literature: Rebranding Games and Global Relevance after World War II—Mircea Eliade, E. M. Cioran, Eugène Ionesco Mihai Iovanel (G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Literary Theory of the Romanian Academy, Romania)11. A Geoliterary Ecumene of the East: Socialist Realism—The Romanian CaseMircea Martin (University of Bucharest, Romania)12. Romanian Modernity and the Rhetoric of Vacuity: Toward a Comparative Postcolonialism Bogdan Stefanescu (University of Bucharest, Romania)13. Gaming the World-System: Creativity, Politics, and Beat Influence in the Poetry of the 1980s GenerationTeodora Dumitru (G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Literary Theory of the Romanian Academy, Romania)14. How Does Exile Make Space? Contemporary Romanian Émigré Literature and the Worldedness of Place: Herta Müller, Andrei Codrescu, Norman ManeaDoris Mironescu (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania)15. Made in Translation: A National Poetics for the Transnational WorldMihaela Ursa (Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, Romania)BibliographyIndex

Romanian Literature as World Literature is an ambitious enterprise to synthesize some important contemporary pieces of research on world literature while introducing the Romanian literature’s 'worldliness' to an international readership. Instead of reducing the comparative investigations to a search for causal, mechanical and hierarchical types of influence exerted by world literature on Romanian literature, or investigating the latter’s sporadic occurrences on the 'great stage' of literature in the major languages, the volume offers a more complex (and more interesting) way to reveal the multiple types of relationships they keep. ... The geopolitical reading proposed by the Romanian Literature as World Literature has certainly a political dimension, as it overtly criticizes the essentialist concept of the national literature which leads to cultural insularism, chauvinism, and hard-line nationalism. ... [It] is a committed piece of scholarship, which is aware of its performative power, aware of its responsibility to represent the connection of the national and the worldly to avoid the dangers of cultural insularism on the one hand, and of self-colonization on the other.