Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TRANSHIROL (A Transnational History of Romanian Literature)
Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30
Demographic trends and the epistemic mutations of the past decades have led to numerous critiques of the nationalist-organicist model of literary history. Furthermore, the ethnic status of the individuals identifying as Romanians has become increasingly complex upon increased migration and the emergence of a new state (the Republic of Moldova) where they amount to an important share of the total population.
Consequently, a series of questions are yet to be properly explored and answered:
- How could and should transnational histories of “national” literatures be written in a post-national age?
- How can we avoid the methodological protectionism typical of “smaller” cultures against the resurgence of nationalist/populist sentiments?
- How can we steer clear of narrow nationalism without falling into neoliberal traps and embracing uncritically the theory of freefloating cosmopolitanism?
- How should a history of Romanian literature look like in the age of globalization?
The working hypothesis of TRANSHIROL – and one of its groundbreaking elements – is that a “national” literature should not be regarded mainly as a system (even if it has systemic properties), but rather as a network defined by the transnational communities into which it is integrated depending on its geopolitical situation. Throughout our project, this hypothesis will be operationalized via two sets of innovative instruments: the dichotomy between cultural matrix and cultural model, and a fourfold taxonomy of literary operators (institutional/paradigmatic/connective/imaginary).
By combining systematic theorizing with historical scholarship and close reading with distant reading, TRANSHIROL sets out to chart the over five-century-long history of Romanian literature (classified into four majos phases: c. 1500-1830; 1830-1948; 1948-1989; 1989-2020+) and the progressive evolution of its network toward planetary proportions, since a transnational history of Romanian literature strives to ultimately become a history of world literature written from a Romanian perspective.
Consequently, a series of questions are yet to be properly explored and answered:
- How could and should transnational histories of “national” literatures be written in a post-national age?
- How can we avoid the methodological protectionism typical of “smaller” cultures against the resurgence of nationalist/populist sentiments?
- How can we steer clear of narrow nationalism without falling into neoliberal traps and embracing uncritically the theory of freefloating cosmopolitanism?
- How should a history of Romanian literature look like in the age of globalization?
The working hypothesis of TRANSHIROL – and one of its groundbreaking elements – is that a “national” literature should not be regarded mainly as a system (even if it has systemic properties), but rather as a network defined by the transnational communities into which it is integrated depending on its geopolitical situation. Throughout our project, this hypothesis will be operationalized via two sets of innovative instruments: the dichotomy between cultural matrix and cultural model, and a fourfold taxonomy of literary operators (institutional/paradigmatic/connective/imaginary).
By combining systematic theorizing with historical scholarship and close reading with distant reading, TRANSHIROL sets out to chart the over five-century-long history of Romanian literature (classified into four majos phases: c. 1500-1830; 1830-1948; 1948-1989; 1989-2020+) and the progressive evolution of its network toward planetary proportions, since a transnational history of Romanian literature strives to ultimately become a history of world literature written from a Romanian perspective.
The work completed and the main results achieved in TRANSHIROL so far fully cover the first two project objectives and partially address the third:
1) Drafting the theoretical and methodological framework of a transnational literary history. This process involved not only discussing state-of-the-art instruments and practices but also developing and refining the theoretical tools proposed by the team. To this end, three special issues were published in Transilvania (nos. 7-8/2021; no. 10/2022) and Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai – Philologia (no. 3/2022), dedicated to the latest and most challenging approaches to Romanian literature. Of the concepts proposed within the project, the theoretical distinction between cultural matrix and cultural model was developed and then applied in the analysis of a paradigmatic case for Romanian culture (see the collective volume “The German Model in Romanian Culture,” Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023), while another study used the mechanism of cultural triangulation to explain Paul Celan’s work.
2) The transnational study of Romanian literature (Phase 1: c. 1500–1830). Since this objective encompassed not only works and phenomena associated with “old” Romanian literature but also a transnational redefinition of Romanian literature and an analysis of its foundational myths, the project’s second-year activities primarily focused on these latter aspects. In exploring the boundaries of Romanian literature, emphasis was placed on analyzing Romanian-born authors who wrote in languages other than Romanian. Key contributions in this area include the collective volume "The German Model in Romanian Culture," case studies on Paul Celan and Herta Müller as representatives of German-language literature originating from Romania, and a series of publications on Hungarian minority literature in Romania. To better disseminate the latter dimension of the project, a special issue of the Korunk journal was published in 2022. Regarding the foundational myths of Romanian literature, one of TRANSHIROL’s challenges is to replace the national myth of “Miorița” (a talking sheep from a Romanian folk ballad) with the transnational myth of Dracula. Several articles on this topic have been authored as part of the project so far.
3) The transnational study of Romanian literature (Phase 2: 1830–1948). Although the current reporting period only partially covers the time allocated for this objective, the project team has effectively addressed the most relevant literary operators of the era: the intersection of literature with other forms of discourse, the most representative genres and authors, intercultural exchanges, and identity representations. For instance, the team examined various genres, such as the social/extractivist novel, feminist novel, children’s literature, modern and avant-garde poetry, and gave particular attention to the reception of various writers and literary paradigms in Romanian literature, including Ibsen and expressionism.
1) Drafting the theoretical and methodological framework of a transnational literary history. This process involved not only discussing state-of-the-art instruments and practices but also developing and refining the theoretical tools proposed by the team. To this end, three special issues were published in Transilvania (nos. 7-8/2021; no. 10/2022) and Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai – Philologia (no. 3/2022), dedicated to the latest and most challenging approaches to Romanian literature. Of the concepts proposed within the project, the theoretical distinction between cultural matrix and cultural model was developed and then applied in the analysis of a paradigmatic case for Romanian culture (see the collective volume “The German Model in Romanian Culture,” Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023), while another study used the mechanism of cultural triangulation to explain Paul Celan’s work.
2) The transnational study of Romanian literature (Phase 1: c. 1500–1830). Since this objective encompassed not only works and phenomena associated with “old” Romanian literature but also a transnational redefinition of Romanian literature and an analysis of its foundational myths, the project’s second-year activities primarily focused on these latter aspects. In exploring the boundaries of Romanian literature, emphasis was placed on analyzing Romanian-born authors who wrote in languages other than Romanian. Key contributions in this area include the collective volume "The German Model in Romanian Culture," case studies on Paul Celan and Herta Müller as representatives of German-language literature originating from Romania, and a series of publications on Hungarian minority literature in Romania. To better disseminate the latter dimension of the project, a special issue of the Korunk journal was published in 2022. Regarding the foundational myths of Romanian literature, one of TRANSHIROL’s challenges is to replace the national myth of “Miorița” (a talking sheep from a Romanian folk ballad) with the transnational myth of Dracula. Several articles on this topic have been authored as part of the project so far.
3) The transnational study of Romanian literature (Phase 2: 1830–1948). Although the current reporting period only partially covers the time allocated for this objective, the project team has effectively addressed the most relevant literary operators of the era: the intersection of literature with other forms of discourse, the most representative genres and authors, intercultural exchanges, and identity representations. For instance, the team examined various genres, such as the social/extractivist novel, feminist novel, children’s literature, modern and avant-garde poetry, and gave particular attention to the reception of various writers and literary paradigms in Romanian literature, including Ibsen and expressionism.
To date, TRANSHIROL has made numerous advances beyond the state of the art, either in the broader field of literary studies or Romanian literary history. These achievements can be classified as follows:
A. The development of new methods, tools, and concepts for analyzing literary history:
The most complex and extensive methodology developed within TRANSHIROL is the very idea of transnational literary history. As the PI explains in one of his articles, this is “a history that recognizes not only that any nation is inherently an ‘internation,’ but also that the structure of any so-called national literature includes elements from other nations and materials that characterize geopolitical blocs larger than nations (regions, continents, cardinal directions such as the ‘Orient,’ ‘Europe,’ or the ‘South’). Any ‘national’ literature is, in fact, ‘transnational’—this premise is the backbone of such a history.”
B. Empirical findings (examples):
- despite their militant aims, the early Romanian feminist novels published around 1900 reveal a classist bias: the depiction of servants’ lives often lacks a critical analysis of poverty and instead serves as a backdrop to highlight the struggles of their upper-class mistresses;
- during the interwar period in Romania (and elsewhere), a type of fiction that criticized extractivist practices emerged; this genre could be seen as a “missing link” explaining the shift from traditional social realism to the new magical realism, which would later become a global phenomenon in the latter half of the twentieth century;
- an author like Paul Celan proves to be not just a single poet but rather a network encompassing all his potential developments in any language, intersecting possible (but abandoned) and accomplished versions of himself, writing in two languages (even if not proportionately so), and absorbing and distributing biographical and cultural information between them.
We anticipate that by the end of the project, the theoretical tools developed within TRANSHIROL will be significantly refined and adopted by other research teams, while our empirical findings will cover all major periods and key aspects of Romanian literature.
A. The development of new methods, tools, and concepts for analyzing literary history:
The most complex and extensive methodology developed within TRANSHIROL is the very idea of transnational literary history. As the PI explains in one of his articles, this is “a history that recognizes not only that any nation is inherently an ‘internation,’ but also that the structure of any so-called national literature includes elements from other nations and materials that characterize geopolitical blocs larger than nations (regions, continents, cardinal directions such as the ‘Orient,’ ‘Europe,’ or the ‘South’). Any ‘national’ literature is, in fact, ‘transnational’—this premise is the backbone of such a history.”
B. Empirical findings (examples):
- despite their militant aims, the early Romanian feminist novels published around 1900 reveal a classist bias: the depiction of servants’ lives often lacks a critical analysis of poverty and instead serves as a backdrop to highlight the struggles of their upper-class mistresses;
- during the interwar period in Romania (and elsewhere), a type of fiction that criticized extractivist practices emerged; this genre could be seen as a “missing link” explaining the shift from traditional social realism to the new magical realism, which would later become a global phenomenon in the latter half of the twentieth century;
- an author like Paul Celan proves to be not just a single poet but rather a network encompassing all his potential developments in any language, intersecting possible (but abandoned) and accomplished versions of himself, writing in two languages (even if not proportionately so), and absorbing and distributing biographical and cultural information between them.
We anticipate that by the end of the project, the theoretical tools developed within TRANSHIROL will be significantly refined and adopted by other research teams, while our empirical findings will cover all major periods and key aspects of Romanian literature.