Modern Negotiations: the Interplay between Public and Private Life in Romanian Modernist Literature

Drawing on Modernist Studies, Critical Theory and the work of Bruno Latour, the aim of my paper is to explore how Romanian modernist literature from the late 19th century to the first three decades of the 20th century engages with, participates in, and contributes to a culture of modernity. I will investigate the way in which Romanian modernist literature negotiates the relationship that the modern society constructs between the public and private dimensions of life, starting from two important sociocultural and economic phenomena: (1) the intensification of migration, and (2) the development of cultural tourism. In the first part of the article, I will provide an operational definition of the concept of modernity starting from Hartmut Rosa and Bruno Latour’s work and discuss its intertwining with literary modernism. In the second part, I will delve into the way that the Romanian modernist characters, both male and female, migrate from one place to another in pursuit of employment opportunities and a better life. In the third part, I will explore the modern context of travelling the world, and the idea of youth culture from both historical and sociological perspectives. This section sets the stage for the final part of the article, in which I will focus on what I consider to be the first modern female cosmopolitan in Romanian literature and I will explore the aspects of modernity that the cosmopolitan novel sheds light on and constructs. The literary modernism discussed in this article spans from the late 19th century, exemplified by Vasile Alecsandri's novel Dridri1 (1871), to novels from the second and third decades of the 20th century, including Codin2 (1926), În lumea Mediteranei3 (1934) by Panait Istrati, and Femei4 (1934) by Mihail Sebastian.

Full Text