BOOK REVIEW: COSMIN CIOTLOȘ, CENACLUL DE LUNI. VIAȚA ȘI OPERA, BUCUREȘTI: PANDORA PUBLISHING, 2021, 464 P.
BOOK REVIEW: COSMIN CIOTLOȘ, CENACLUL DE LUNI. VIAȚA ȘI OPERA, BUCUREȘTI: PANDORA PUBLISHING, 2021, 464 P.

Summary/Abstract: Focusing on the 1980s generation of Romanian poets and with the portrayal of a specific sensitivity belonging to these authors, Cosmin Ciotloș proposes an archaeology of the well-known “Monday Literary Circle,” within which Romanian postmodernism was born and developed. Not having a unique methodology for exploring this institution of creation and debate, Ciotloș relies on the reconstruction of the group’s formative phases, mainly by relating this phenomenon to other factors that exerted a significant influence on this literary circle: magazines such as Amfiteatru or România literară, the profoundly defamatory opposition criticism, represented by Eugen Barbu and Săptămâna magazine, as well as two other cenacles that succeeded the Monday Literary Circle—“Cenaclul Rapid” and “Cenaclul din Tei”. Beyond the fine hermeneutics that the author carries out in the last part of the book, through thirteen case studies, the first two chapters, “Marile speranțe” [Great Expectations] and “Impactul cu realul” [The Impact with Reality], are built by analyzing texts from journal archives, which bring together lesser-known testimonies and details about the meetings that officially began on March 3, 1977, and were banned in 1986.

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