The Fantastic in Romanian Literature

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Maria Ioniță (Ryerson University)

Ed. by Calin Andrei Mihailescu, University of Western Ontario
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.4: Romanian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Maria Sabina Draga Alexandru (University of Bucharest), Calin Andrei Mihailescu (University of Western Ontario)

Domains

Movements, styles and periods (literature)

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1830-2015

Places

Romania (Location)

Genres and Modes

Fantastic / Grotesque
Gothic & Ghosts

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Early Fantastic and Gothic Literature

The beginnings of the fantastic in Romanian literature are inspired by the rich trove of folklore, legends, myths, superstitions and folk traditions, many of which were very much alive and vibrant well into the 19th century (even at the start of the 20th century Romania’s rural inhabitants made up as much as 80% of the country’s population). The bases of the national literature were being laid in Romania roughly at the same time as the modern fantastic was developing in Western and Central European literature through the rise of the Gothic, and the Romantic valuation of imaginative and liminal states. This explains perhaps the relative scarcity of early fantastic compositions in Romanian literature. The generation of authors born towards the turn

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

7090 words

Citation: Ioniță, Maria. "The Fantastic in Romanian Literature". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 January 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19441, accessed 24 November 2024.]