Trecutul ca resursă imaginativă. Hibriditate, model și adaptare în romanul istoric al lui Alexandru I. Alexandrescu
The past as an imaginative resource. Hybridity, pattern and adaptation in Alexandru I. Alexandrescu’s historical novel

Summary/Abstract: The emergence and intensification of the historical novel corresponds to the stages of coagulation and crystallization of the modern Romanian state and culture, imbued with the vibrations of national identity. Literature faithfully reflects the tribulations of the formation of the taste for this hybrid species, whose taming of the expressive formula is gradually achieved, from the ornamentation and excesses of romantic rhetoric to the voluptuousness of the affable narrative. The novel, this hybrid species that has consistently established itself in the local cultural environment, is born of a compensatory literary effort and a specific ordering of events that, without programmatically eliminating randomness, expresses the will to impose progressive ideas, legitimising the cultural, social, ideological and political aspirations of the moment. As the favourite readings of 19th-century Romanian novelists were not historiographical works but Walter Scott’s novels, the vision of the authors of historical novels was shaped by a successful formula in which fantasy replaced historical accuracy. History became both a pretext and a motive for cultural modernity. In Alexandru I. Alexandrescu's novels, history serves as a resonance field for complex plots, and the hybrid character supports the effort to integrate several narrative formulas and intertextual strategies, which encompass the features of the crime, mystery and sentimental novel subgenres. The attributes of “original”, “mystery”, “historical” novel are relativised, despite authorial intent, by the thematic diversity of content and the increasingly volatile boundaries between model, adaptation and originality.

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