Under the Sign of the ‘Corinthian’. Theory and Ideology in Nicolae Manolescu’s ‘Noah’s Ark’
Under the Sign of the ‘Corinthian’. Theory and Ideology in Nicolae Manolescu’s ‘Noah’s Ark’

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the methodological validity of Nicolae Manolescu’s tripartite manner of classification for the forms of the modern Romanian novel in his study Arca lui Noe (Noah’s Ark), 3 vol. (1980-1983). Our analysis focuses mainly on the construction of the category ‘Corinthian’, since it was the theme of the two most important objections the book met: (1) in the description of the ‘Corinthian’, the author discards the perspective of the homology between the literary forms and the social structures, which he applies consistently in the drawing of the other two categories (the ‘Doric’ and the ‘Ionic’); (2) unlike the other two types, the ‘Corinthian’ is no longer defined from the point of view of the relation between the narrator and the character, but approached from the relation between the author and the fictional reality represented by the novel. Our paper rejects both objections, because: (1) the homology between the literary forms and the social structures is not discarded, but only camouflaged, in the case of the ‘Corinthian’, by a series of subversive hints to the totalitarian nature of the communist regime; (2) the criterion of the relation between the author and the fictional reality represented by the novel does not exclude, but merely governs, in the overall classification by Manolescu, the criterion of the relation between the narrator and the character. The conclusion of our demonstration is that the taxonomy in Arca lui Noe continues to be one of the most powerful tools of analysis of the modern Romanian novel.

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