Romanian Literary History at a Crossroads: Mihai Iovanel's History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1900-2020 and the Cultural-Materialist and Transnational Turn in Literary Studies. [Editorial]

Abstract

As intellectual projects, literary histories hold a particular significance in Romanian culture; they recover authors and relegate them to anonymity, make and break canons, and promote and undermine ideologies and political agendas that reach far beyond literature and the aesthetic. “Literaturocentric,” as has been described by some, this culture has treasured literary historiography. To this very day, the greatest aspiration of most Romanian critics is to write a history of national literature—of entire Romanian literature. In certain quarters, literary histories published during the first half of the previous century are still subject to a cult of sorts.