The Novel as the Foundation of Romanian Literary Terminology in the Age of Cultural Modernity

The history of the Romanian novel intertwines with the earliest substantial theoretical explorations within Romanian culture. As the primary foundation of its own theorization, the novel has initiated a fruitful set of observations regarding the nature, objectives, stakes, and potential thematic contents of literature. Since the discourse on the novel must be articulated in an operative theoretical form, constructed with terms whose conceptual boundaries are precisely defined, the absence of homogeneous literary species or genres that could serve as literary foundations in analyses condemns sporadic sets of reflections without application to the national cultural environment. This situation creates difficulties in establishing literary terminology. The canon represents a record of aesthetic authority relations upon which there is consensus and, at the same time, the result of a battle for hegemony over a cultural system.

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