Meridian Critic

The paper offers an analysis of the concepts of modernism and postmodernism in Romanian literary studies, situating them in the context of Romanian post-war poetry.

The paper discusses the main theories on parody from ancient Aristotle to the modern reception theorists. It aims to show the way in which the perception of parody evolves from a minor literary creation into an important component of all literary works.

Among all the members of the onirical group founded in Romania in the late sixties (Leonid Dimov, Dumitru Ţepeneag, Virgil Mazilescu, and others), Vintilă Ivănceanu can undoubtedly be considered the most virulent polemist, though a "dreamy polemist" (as Miron Radu Paraschivescu called him). This polemic vocation can be detected not only in all the literature (i.e. anti-literature) he wrote (poetry as well as prose), in the good tradition of the "historical" avant-garde, but also in his radical gesture of exiling himself, obviously frustrated by the political climate of his country. Although translated in several languages (German, Swedish, Japanese, etc.), Vintilă Ivănceanu still remains in his native country, like the most vanguardists, a quasi-unknown writer.

Before his long exile, Vintilă Horia went to Vienna in June 1941, as he was awarded a Humboldt scholarship. Here he approached the Viennese literature and art, and translated several works by Rilke, Weinheber, Trakl, Mell, etc., most of them published in the Romanian review Gîndirea. In Vienna he also wrote in 1942 a paraphrase of Alecu Russo's Cîntarea României, as he tried to encourage his people, who was confronting a difficult political situation.

Published in 1982, Les Fous de Bassan, fifth novel of Anne Hébert, deals with the unspeakable passions and obsessions of a small community in Canada, in the late thirties. The mixture of the various points of view, the numerous "voices" that outspeak their complexes in the various chapters of the text make this one of the best hebertian novels, whose heterogenous beauty our paper aims to reveal.

Panait Istrati is a Romanian writer who published his work in French, a language that he learned, as Henry James, when he was in his late thirties. His first short novel, Chira Chiralina, took the French critics by surprise. It might have been the new spirit, or the exotic, unknown world that had such an impact on French culture. But, it is especially the surprising force of narration that should be brought to the fore. The art of narrating is a compulsive task for him. The narratives of the selves Istrati tells become the narrative of his self, their quest being an opportunity for the revelation of the intricate nature of the authorial instance.

The paper focuses on varioust indirect manifestations of intertextuality in Mircea Nedelciu'short-stories. The aim is to show the way in which the texts of the Romanian writer "read" and "re-write" other authors, literary texts or techniques.