Volume XXVI (2021), no. 2

Starting from the assumption that a large number of fictional writings published in the twentieth century foreground such literary  motifs as the lost / found manuscript (sometimes replaced by another similar relic), the present article attempts to highlight the significant subversive potential of postmodern literature,  its  scepticism  regarding the positive sciences’ claim to anchor the discourse in stable representational grounds. My primary textual focus will be on three historiographic metafictions of the ‘80s: Silviu  Angelescu’s  Calpuzanii  [The Forgers], Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot and Milorad Pavić’s lexicon-novel Dictionary of the Khazars, having in common  an undisputable propensity for mystification and fakery.

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This article aims to explore the relationship between the stereotype of the witch identified in the Saxon fairy tales of the nineteenth-century Transylvania, and the image of the accused in the witchcraft trials which occurred in early modern cities of Sibiu and Brașov (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). In order  to  highlight this perspective of analysis, I selected two types of sources which I consider particularly useful for my research. Firstly, I chose to rely on seven Saxon fairy tales which present the witch as a secondary character, identified in Joseph Haltrich's collection of fairy tales,  entitled Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande in Siebenbürgen, published in 1854. Secondly, I examined fifteen court records selected from the National Archives of Sibiu (Hermannstadt, Nagyszeben) and Brașov (Kronstadt, Brassó) from the years 1692-1785. By drawing a parallel between the two images, I want to outline the discrepancies between the stereotype and  the  historical  reality, aiming, at the same time, to identify the factors which contributed  to the portrait of the witch that has been perpetuated over time in fairy tales. Furthermore, such an analysis may allow one to observe to what extent literature can be considered a document. Taking into consideration that this direction of research did not  receive  the regional historians’ attention, I consider the initiative favourable in covering a historiographical gap.

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The Romanian village from the first half of the twentieth century is more than a place, it is a living body, full of meaning, symbols, life,  colour, suffering, knowledge. Mihail Sadoveanu insists on showing us all these things in his works, in recording all the aspects related to this world, before it being swallowed by progress and oblivion. What we do in this article is an analysis of Sadoveanu's literature and a presentation of some aspects of the Romanian village, seen by Sadoveanu’s artistic vision, but also real aspects and features recorded by documents and archives preserved since then.

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The systematisation policy was one of the more significant projects of the socialist leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union aiming at eradicating existing disparities between the centre and the periphery, and finally leading to the much desired ‘socialist city’. In Romania, the “re-organization of settlements and territory” affected millions of people in urban and rural areas. This paper deals with the Roma marginal communities living in Transylvania during the communist years and the changes they encountered due to the systematisation process which, mostly in the 70s, explicitly targeted them because of their peripheral social behaviour, as they lived in “inappropriate neighbourhoods” and were practicing a parasitic lifestyle – considered harmful to the socialist society in the making. Some of the research questions to which the essay aims to provide answers are the following: Which were the peripheral dwelling conditions in the rural and urban areas in post-war Romania? When and how did the communist authorities decide to destroy peripheral Roma settlements? How do Roma remember forced displacement / forced residency (in case of the nomads) during the communist years? In order to give relevant answers, the research took as a starting point the archives and the post 1989 historiography. After that, an oral history approach was used to collect and recover life stories of Roma from Transylvania in the communist period which intends to complete the Romanian historical narrative.

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Seeing that the majority of folk tales feature a male protagonist, the “Ileana Sâmziana” fairy tale, collected by Petre Ispirescu, represents a deviation from this heroic archetype by focusing on the emperor’s daughter, who would become Prince Charming. Circumscribed to the ATU 514 folk motif, i.e., change of sex, it depicts gender fluidity reminiscent of cross-dressing in pubertal rites of passage. Based on these premises, the present paper closely analyses the process of transsexual metamorphosis of the main character. Ultimately, it is aimed to expose any resemblance to traditional formative discourses on masculine social values and determine whether the emperor’s daughter should be regarded as a true feminine and /or a heroic figure.

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