Censorship and the Interdiction of Romanian Book Circulation in Transylvania Before 1918

Prof. Popa’s article discusses the problem of censorship in a literary historical approach, connected to its practice in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. The end of the Revolution of 1848 brought drastic measures for Romanians from Transylvania; their journals were interdicted, any initiative for publication was hindered or made almost impossible by the Austrian censorship, which also inhibited the literary communication between Romanians in Transylvania and outside the Carpathians. The negative effects of a much too severe censorship are presented on the basis of excerpts from literary and archival sources, such as the biography and correspondence of eminent figures of 19th century Romanian writers inside and outside Transylvania, or certain archival evidence found in the Viennese archives (reports about censored schoolbooks, blamed of having contained improper formulations). The reference to these reports, though not very lengthy, may well be considered a literary historical stronghold of the article.

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