"With few exceptions, the unsurpassable inequality between cultures on the literary field and in the imaginary Republic of Letters remains underemphasized and a more radical reconsideration is needed with regard to vernacular and peripheral forms of understanding cosmopolitan principles. The authors of the present volume aim to convincingly voice insufficiently acknowledged cosmopolitan networks, frames, authors, cultural and literary practices, whose links to the nation-building process of Romanian literature are interwoven with their involvement in creating transnational routes and bridges. This volume arises from the contributors' ongoing attempt to develop a systemic analysis of the legitimizing mechanisms and evolutionary paths by which (semi) peripheral literary cultures not only influence and transform the central ones, but also undermine the privileged position of the latter within the global literary field"--
The volume aims to forge or compile specific conceptual frameworks and analytical methods to be used in order to overcome the theoretical impasse that still impinges on current world-literature approaches, which have only explained the relation center-periphery in one-sided terms of cultural diffusionism or synchronization.
With few exceptions, the unsurpassable inequality between cultures on the literary field and in the imaginary Republic of Letters remains underemphasized and a more radical reconsideration is needed with regard to vernacular and peripheral forms of understanding cosmopolitan principles. The authors voice insufficiently acknowledged cosmopolitan networks, frames, authors, cultural and literary practices, whose links to the nation-building process of Romanian literature are interwoven with their involvement in creating transnational routes and bridges. The book develops a systemic analysis of the legitimizing mechanisms and evolutionary paths by which semiperipheral literary cultures influence and transform the central ones, but also undermine the privileged position of the latter within the global literary field.
Mihaela Ursa and Alex Goldi: Introduction Transnational Workings of
Peripheral Systems Imre József Balįzs Cosmopolitan Minorities: Strategies
of Cultural Exchange in Hungarian Avant- Garde Journals from Romania Adrian
Ttran: Being Minor at the Margins: Literature, Transnational Networks, and
Anarchism in la belle époque Romania Emanuel Modoc: Interperipheral
Worlding and Methodological Cosmopolitanism in the East Central European
Avant- Gardes Snejana Ung: Semi- Peripheral Multiculturalisms: The
Frontiers of the Banat Region in Theoretical Debates and Literary Works
Adriana Stan A Literature for All, a Europe Even for the Small: The Case for
Universalism and Europeanization in Adrian Marinos Work Marius Conkan:
Cosmopolitan Spatiality: Worlding Popular Fiction in (Pre- )Communist Romania
Daiana Gārdan: Preaching and Teaching Cosmopolitanism: E. Lovinescu, M.
Dragomirescu, and the Emancipation of Romanian Modern Criticism Cosmin
Borza: Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Modernization without Westernization of the
Romanian Culture in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Marius
Popa: Cosmopolitan Perspectives in Marthe Bibescos Oriental Imaginary The
Case of the Novel Izvor, the Country of Willows Mihnea Bālici: Forced
Cosmopolitanism: On the Contradictory Character of Labor Migration in
Contemporary Romanian Fiction Ovio Olaru: : Herta Müller and Anticommunist
Cosmopolitanism Alex Ciorogar: The Ecological World- System of Posthuman
Cosmopolitanism and Contemporary Romanian Poetry Editors.
Mihaela Ursa is Professor of comparative literature at the Babe-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, teaching on genre theory, comparative literature, digital humanities and transmediality. She supervises PhD students working on world literature, translation studies, comparative and Romanian studies.
Alex Goldi is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. He works on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Romanian literature, digital humanities, and quantitative cultural history.