Racialized Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Romanian Literature
Racialized Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Romanian Literature

Summary/Abstract: My paper aims to discuss the imperative of combining ethno-racial and World Literature studies when analyzing the worlding of a semiperipheral literature. More precisely, it looks at the connection between modernity and racialization in Romanian literature in the second half of the nineteenth century, drawing on the postcolonial critique of hegemonic modernity (Quijano, Boatcă & Parvulescu) and showing that, although Romania is not traditionally included in historical accounts of colonialism and enslavement, the formation of a national identity and literature at the turn of the century went hand in hand with the orientalist depiction and radical othering of internal ethnic minorities. To do so, it focuses on a few texts by three canonical writers: short stories by I.L. Caragiale, prose by Ioan Slavici and political articles by Mihai Eminescu, arguing that their perception of cultural and racial difference is not only symptomatic of social attitudes in nineteenth-century Romania, but also of the contemporaneous position of Romanian literature in the world-literary system.

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