Republican Constellations A Reflection by José Bergamín

This note reflects on the need to reevaluate labels that protagonists of Spanish republican cultural life gave to themselves. Reasons provided by Bergamín, one of its protagonists, dismantle the importance of a famous act in Seville that canonised only a part of the actors of that cultural moment. Furthermore it allows us to understand that using those labels expand the composition of an heterogeneous group who worked together in a new political project to modernise the country. The time has come to become aware that the nomenclature still used is the product of literary historiography, strongly politicised by a dictatorial state.

Procesos da historiografía literaria galega Para un debate crítico

Galician literary historiography shows links and ruptures that refer to the cultural history of Galicia itself and to the sequence of historical events that have delineated the social, economic and political development of the country since the 19th century. These coordinates comprise a series of processes, including the elaboration and propagation of ideologies aimed at achieving a way out of political subalternity and oriented towards the horizon of national emancipation. Those events and these processes also marked the connection of Galicia with modernity and the dynamics of historical change. As a result of the above, this book analyses critically the institutionalization processes of the history of Galician literature – with special emphasis on historiographic models such as that of Said Armesto, Carvalho Calero, Méndez Ferrín and others – and indicates the need to undertake a productive methodological innovation of the discipline in heuristic, organic and discursive terms. It further argues that this update should pay attention to substantive theoretical debates, not exclusively of specific cultural coordinates, such as Galician ones or any others that could be considered. Among these, the cooperation between history and sociology, the intellection of literary facts as historical facts, the review of the link between literary history and nation, the public uses of literary history, and the inquiry of discursive choices that promote a less self-indulgent and predictable historiography. This essentially involved a challenge, that of permanent dialogue with some of the most powerful critical reinterpretations of the Galician historiographic tradition and with alternative models constituted from feminist thought, postcolonial theories, the sociology of the literary field or the systemic theories of culture, as well as with the contributions made from a post-national understanding of the literary phenomenon.

The Role of Cultural Translation for Literary Historiography

The main objective of the present paper is to highlight the relevance of translation in the scholarly endeavour of placing and firmly setting national literature in a wider context, i.e. planetary literature. Moreover, due to its complexity, long tradition, noble endeavour, worldwide mission and overarching goal, translation – as a fourfold process encompassing the linguistic, cultural, interpretive, comparative dimensions, according to Christian Moraru – serves as a most effective connector between words and worlds, in addition to overcoming successive waves regarding the state of “translatability” as Emily Apter scholarly theorized it, from her first thesis “nothing is translatable” to the twentieth thesis “everything is translatable”, where all the intermediary stages, hypotheses, and other theoretical assumptions further investigated.

The Politics and Poetics of Cicero's Brutus

Cicero's Brutus (46 BCE), a tour-de-force of intellectual and political history, was written amidst political crisis: Caesar's defeat of the republican resistance at the battle of Thapsus. This magisterial example of the dialogue genre capaciously documents the intellectual vibrancy of the Roman Republic and its Greco-Roman traditions. This book is the first study of the work from several distinct yet interrelated perspectives: Cicero's account of oratorical history, the confrontation with Caesar, and the exploration of what it means to write a history of an artistic practice. Close readings of this dialogue-including its apparent contradictions and tendentious fabrications-reveal a crucial and crucially productive moment in Greco-Roman thought. Cicero, this book argues, created the first nuanced, sophisticated, and ultimately 'modern' literary history, crafting both a compelling justification of Rome's oratorical traditions and also laying a foundation for literary historiography that abides to this day.

POETICS OF HISTORY: FORMS OF REPRESENTATION, IMAGOLOGICAL PROJECTIONS, GENRE SPECIFICS (E. HREBINKA’S STORY “COLONEL ZOLOTARENKO OF NIZHYN”)

The article deals with a romantic interpretation of national history in E. Hrebinka’s novel “Colonel Zolotarenko of Nizhyn”. The methodology of the historical school “Annals” is applied, the coverage of the past from the standpoint of its experience by the subject of the story. The purpose of the study is to analyze the text in the plane of postcolonial theory, to find out the role of the genre-creating factor and the Walter-Scottish tradition in the emergence of original historical writing on national soil. Investigate the constructive role of ethnostereotypes in the internalization of history, the intellectual transfer of its images in the plane of internal behavior, emotional experience. Methods is related to the substantiation of alternative reading of historical events in the context of cultural anthropology, ethnoimagology, transfer of other people’s models into one’s environment.The results of the study illustrate the connection between the author’s concept of history and national memory, selection, archiving of past events in the emotional experience of the people, subjective interpretation and even mythologizing of facts, sources, figures. It is a new type of historicism that contributes to the modernity of historical writing and acquires an international character. The connection with ballad as a special genre, stylistic factor, which appears in the mediating function, emphasizes the European tradition of literary historiography. The mechanisms of transformation of the epic principle are analyzed, which obeys the image of private, everyday life, reproduces more or less chamber situations.Special attention is paid to ethnostereotypes, conditions and factors of their formation under the influence of the historical situation, political situation, psychologization of ideas about the Other. Emphasis is placed on the close connection between stereotypes and the so-called post-historical situation, national memory.Conclusions. The poetics of history appears as a set of paths capable of reproducing the past in its subjective emotional refraction, in individual interpretation and the controversial concept of the historical process.Key words: ballad, gothic tradition, interiorization, historiography, xenophobia, stereotype, topos, transfer. У статті йдеться проромантичну інтерпретацію національної історії у повісті Є. Гребінки «Нежинский полковник Золотаренко». Застосовано методологію історичної школи «Анналів», висвітлення минулого з позицій його переживання суб’єктом оповіді. Мета дослідження – проаналізувати текст у контексті постколоніальної теорії, з’ясувати роль жанротворчого чинника і вальтер-скоттівської традиції в постанні самобутнього історичного письма на національному ґрунті; дослідити конструктивну роль етностереотипів в інтеріоризації історії, інтелектуальному перенесенні її образів у сферу внутрішньої поведінки, емоційного переживання. Методологія дослідження пов’язана з обґрунтуванням альтернативного прочитання історичних подій у контексті культурної антропології, етноімагології, трансферу чужих моделей у своє середовище. Продуктивним є застосування нового історизму як наукової моделі прочитання історичної нарації Гребінки крізь призму чутливості, етностереотипів, приватного життя. З цього погляду методологія французької історичної школи «Анналів» дозволяє побачити в тексті альтернативну, контроверсійну концепцію історії. Її інтерпретація увиразнюється методами літературної імагології, жанрової типології, культурного трансферу. Результати дослідження ілюструють зв’язок між авторською концепцією історії і національною пам’яттю, селекцією, архівуванням подій минулого в емоційному досвіді народу, суб’єктивною інтерпретацією і навіть міфологізацією фактів, джерел, постатей. Йдеться про новий тип історизму, що сприяє модерності історичного письма й набуває інтернаціонального характеру. Простежено зв’язок з баладністю як особливим жанровим, стилетворчим чинником, що постає у посередницькій функції, увиразнює європейську традицію літературного історіописання. Проаналізовано механізми трансформації епічного начала, яке підкоряється зображенню приватного, побутового життя, відтворює камерні ситуації. Окрему увагу приділено етностереотипам, умовам і факторам їхнього утворення під впливом історичної ситуації, політич-ної кон’юнктури, психологізації уявлень про Іншого. Наголошено на щільному зв’язку стереотипів і так званої постісторичної ситуації, національної пам’яті. Простежено способи трансформації історичної правди, шляхи її трансферу у сферу приватного, камерного простору. Висновки. Поетикаісторії постає сукупністю тропів, здатних відтворити минуле в його суб’єктивно емоційному заломленні, в індивідуальній інтерпретації і контроверсійній концепції історичного процесу. Ключові слова: баладність, готична традиція, історіописання, ксенофобія, стереотип, трансфер.

The Challenges of Writing a National Literary History in the Era of Transnationalism: Insights from a Peripheral Literary Space

It goes without saying that during the nineteenth and twentieth century literary historiography tries to define national identities. However, a methodological and paradigm shift occur at the beginning of the twenty-first century when, under the auspices of globalization and the emergence of world literature and transnational literary studies, literary historiography is re-thought as a collective and transnational project. Yet, the asymmetry of the world literary system affects literary historiography too. When it comes to this scholarly genre, the asymmetry is most visible in the fact that in the era of transnationalism, national histories are still written at the periphery. Given the aforementioned observation, this paper a) looks into the challenges of writing literary history in Romania in the age of world literature and transnational studies, and b) tries to explain why a national literary history is still needed and how it can change the way we think about Romanian literature. The starting point of this inquiry is represented by the publication of Mihai Iovănel’s Istoria literaturii române contemporane: 1990-2020 [History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020]. In the context of the ‘transnational turn’ in literary studies, the attempt to write relevant national histories in a peripheral literary space such as Romania is faced, in my view, with two major challenges: 1) the fact that transnationalism manifests itself differently at the periphery and 2) the tradition of Romanian literary criticism and history. The former refers to the fact that unlike central literatures, where transnationalism is shaped to a large extent by migrant writers (those who enter these literatures), in Romanian literature it comprises exiled or migrant writers (those who left Romania and not vice versa) and, to a lesser extent, the literatures written by ethnic minorities. A comparative approach can cast light on this difference. For example, while the thirteenth volume of The Oxford English Literary History is dedicated entirely to migrant and bicultural writers, transnational histories concerning the peripheries, such as History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, focus on multiple literary spaces and therefore have a different approach to dealing with transnationalism. The latter challenge is represented, as shown by Iovănel, by the long-lasting tradition of the “principle of aesthetic autonomism”, which persists even in post-communist Romania. In this regard, this paper aims to show that Iovănel’s History… overcomes the above-mentioned hindrances of literary criticism and succeeds in offering an image of Romanian literature not as confined to its national boundaries but as part of the world literary system. Along with other significant scholarly works on Romanian literature as and in world literature, this project is a significant step towards re-thinking Romanian literature as a “literature of the world” (Terian 2015).

Genre Practice in Literary Historiography: A Romanian Case

Premised on the pervasiveness of generic categories within literary historiography, the present analysis attempts to delineate the generic idioms present within three histories of Romanian literature (authored by G. Călinescu, Nicolae Manolescu and Mihai Iovănel, respectively). Engaging a descriptively historical, rather than theoretical, approach to genre and its metadiscourses, the paper begins with an abridged version of the cardinal disputes of genre criticism. Subsequently, it comparatively addresses the presence of genre within the three volumes, aiming to locate them within recognizable frameworks of genericity and to establish the overlapping territories of their generic landscapes. Thus, it distinguishes G. Călinescu as a practitioner of post-Romantic genre theory, further showcasing how some of his central aestheticist positions survive in Nicolae Manolescu’s moderately formalist account of the issue. Against the backdrop of their more conservative, teleological historiographical projects, Mihai Iovănel’s 2021 Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane 1990-2020 [The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020] displays a distinct methodological apparatus, predicated on the author’s rejection of the paradigmatic autonomy of the aesthetic. His employment of materialist theories of art is corelative to a conception of genre as a contingent, empirically determined instrument of analysis, which, far from being a rhetorically stable, abstract category, actively mediates the relationship between social and aesthetic history. This shift engenders substantial amendments to the physiognomy of literary history as genre, enabling it to encompass extra-literary (and noncanonical) phenomena. Keywords: literary genres, literary history, Romanian literature, Mihai Iovănel.

Literary Historiography as Event: Mihai Iovănel’s History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020

In his essay, Moraru contends that Mihai Iovănel’s 2021 History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020 is a breakthrough in Romanian literary historiography and criticism overall. According to Moraru, the History revisits radically the terms of the Romantic contract that, in Romania and elsewhere, has typically been underwriting modern criticism. A form of critical realism and an exemplar of postmillennial Romanian literary and cultural studies, Iovănel’s book is, in Moraru’s view, not only provocative but also effectively transformative. To gauge the scope and nature of the changes advocated and enacted in the History, this article examines how Iovănel has put together what he calls the “system” of contemporary Romanian literature. Thus, Moraru is less concerned with which writers are included in the book and which are left out, seeking, instead, answers to a series of questions concerning primarily Iovănel’s cultural-materialist and transnational studies-informed methodology. Along the same theoretical, historical, and political lines, Moraru discusses the project’s makeup as well as the strength of the case the History makes for the need to have another look at a range of pre- and post-1990 literary movements, directions, styles, and authors, principally at postmodernism and its competition and successors in the twenty-first century.

Who’s afraid of Mihai Iovănel? Regimes of Relevance and New Literary Historiography

The present article addresses Mihai Iovănel’s recently published History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020 while pursuing a series of similarities with other contributions to postcommunist national literatures in the Central and Eastern European cultural space, on the one hand, and with previous ways of understanding the concept of literary history, on the other. The article argues that Iovănel’s History is one of the first to assess the importance of the social in the production, study, and national, as well as transnational dissemination of Romanian literature, an emphasis without which the study of literary phenomena risks falling into the blindness of aesthetic autonomy, whose shortcomings are well documented in the book. Lastly, I will argue that Iovănel unwillingly describes several of the most notable shifts in the “regimes of relevance” (Galin Tihanov) that literature has undergone from the communist period to contemporary times.

Systemic Reading in Literary Historiography: Politicisation and Instrumentalization of the Autonomy of the Aesthetic as a Strategy of Repositioning During the 90s

The present paper proposes to follow the evolution of the principle of the autonomy of the aesthetic during the 90’s, with a special focus on the discrepancy between its discourse and its practice, in contrast to its instantiation as a systemically challenging discourse before ’89. Starting from Mihai Iovănel’s recent landmark literary historiographical project History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020, put in conjunction with Gisèle Sapiro’s research on the relative nature of the autonomy in the field theory, the present study aims to show how inside of the Romanian literary field, the concept of autonomy was always instrumentalised towards certain political and ideological interests. These implicit biases are revealed as the actual function of the autonomist discourse via the contextualizing and sociological analyses performed by Iovănel which makes manifest the extra-literary facts surrounding the events within the field. Such an understanding of the autonomy of the aesthetic is also informed by Gisele Sapiro’s theoretical contributions, thus revealing the relative nature of the autonomy and its political and ideological function within the local literary field.