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: 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

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 19^th century (even at the start of the 20^th 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 c…

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7090 words

Citation: Ioniță, Maria. "The Fantastic in Romanian Literature". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 January 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19441, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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