Stages in the Saga of the Interpretation of B. Fundoianu’s Colonial Theory: From E. Lovinescu until Today
Stages in the Saga of the Interpretation of B. Fundoianu’s Colonial Theory: From E. Lovinescu until Today

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I aim to investigate the reception of the thesis that Romanian literature is/should be a “colony” of French literature, put forward by Romanian-Jewish writer and essayst B. Fundoianu (1898–1944) in the “Preface” of his 1922 volume Imagini și cărți din Franța [Images and Books of France]. I start my investigation by analysing the way the “synchronistic” critic E. Lovinescu (1881–1943) chose to interpret this thesis in some of his 1922–1923 works, then I trace its post-war destiny under communism and post-communism. The selection of references allows me to note the particularities and variations of this reception, of the way in which Fundoianu’s colonial thesis and/or the writer’s philosophy as a whole is either totally or partially rejected, justified and nuanced, subjected to readings from angles not previously accepted or imagined, or merely adjusted to converge with some apparently innovative concepts on the academic market of the moment, such as the “antimodern(ity)” launched by Antoine Compagnon in the early 2000s.

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