Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:26:54.274Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Literature and the Symbolic Engineering of the European Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

Monica Spiridon
Monica Spiridon
Affiliation:
University of Bucharest, Romania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

My study draws on the construction of a pro-European identity in modern Romania, a process set in motion by two main engines: a political one (the export around 1848 of the Great French Revolution, in a ‘tamed’ version, to Eastern Europe) and a cultural one (the emergence of Paris as the capital-city of European modernism). Born at the periphery of the continent, the Romanian identity project puts on display a series of insightful dimensions: a logic of homogenization, a centripetal pull towards centralization, linguistic standardization and unity, against any centrifugal forces of cultural difference, a top-down dynamics and, finally, an imaginary self-colonizing drive. As illustrated by the Romanian case, the paradigm of European nationalism opened up new ways of linking nation-building to the needs of modern societies and the interests of professional elites.

Type
Focus: European Literature
Information
European Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 149 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Nemoianu, V. (1989) A Theory of the Secondary: Literature, Progress and Reaction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
2.Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Books).Google Scholar
3.Spiridon, M. (2004) Les dilemmes de l’identité au confins de l’ Europe. Le cas roumain (Paris: L’Harmattan).Google Scholar
4.Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
5.Wolff, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilisation and the Mind of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
6.Anghelescu, M. (1998) The Romanian Revolution of 1848. Moving Images, New International Journal of Romanian Studies, I(1–2), 44–51.Google Scholar
7.Bratianu, I. C. (1938) To Napoleon III. Acte şi cuvîntări. Vol. 1 (Bucureşti: Cartea Românească), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar
8.Spiridon, M. (2003) Eminescu. Proza jurnalistica (Bucuresti: Ed. Curtea Veche).Google Scholar
9.Cioran, E. (1956) La tentation d’exister (Paris: Gallimard).Google Scholar
10.Gelley, A. (1993) City-texts: representation, semiology and urbanism. In: M. Poster (ed.), Politics, Theory and Contemporary Culture (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 237–261.Google Scholar
11. M. Halbwachs (1992) The reconstruction of the past. On Collective Memory, edited, translated and with an Introduction by Lewis Coser (Chicago, London: Chicago University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Cabo Aseguinolaza, F. (2006) Dead or a picture of good health? Comparatism, Europe and World literature. Comparative Literature, 58(4), 418–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. E. Said (1979) Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books).Google Scholar
14.Eliade, M. (1986) Briser le toit de la maison. La créativité et ses symboles (Paris: Gallimard).Google Scholar
15.Bibesco, M. (1960) La Nymphe Europe, I, Mes vies antérieures (Paris: Plon).Google Scholar
16.Totosy de Zepetnek, S. (2002) Comparative cultural studies and the study of central European culture. In: S. Totosy de Zepetnek (ed.), Comparative Central European Culture (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press), 1–32.Google Scholar
17.Suleiman Rubin, S. (2006) Introduction. ‘The Idea of Europe’. Comparative Literature, 58(4), 267–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Johnson, L. R. (2002) Central Europe. Ennemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
19.Ionescu, N. (1990) Roza vînturilor, 1926–1933 (Bucureşti: Cultura Naţională), pp. 146–148.Google Scholar
20.Casanova, P. (2004) The World Republic of Letters, translated by M. B. de Bevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
21.Goldsworty, V. (1998) Inventing Ruritania. The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
22.Krejci, J. and Velimsky, V. (1981) Ethnic and Political Nations (London: Crom Helm).Google Scholar
23.Habermas, J. (1998) The European nation-state: on the past and future of sovereignty and citizenship. Public Culture, 10(2), 397–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24.Donald, J. (1988) How English is it? Popular literature and national culture. New Formations, 6, 31–47.Google Scholar
25.Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990) Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar