Symbols from the village: nature and meanings in Mihail Sadoveanu's  literature Cover Image

Simboluri din lumea satului: Fenomenele naturale și explicațiile lor în literatura lui Mihai Sadoveanu
Symbols from the village: nature and meanings in Mihail Sadoveanu's literature

Author(s): Iuliana Maria Gavrilă
Subject(s): Literary Texts, Oral history
Published by: Editura Academiei Române
Keywords: traditional culture; symbol; belief; collective mentality; imaginary;

Summary/Abstract: This article presents some of the symbols found in the traditional Romanian space (especially the area of Moldova). I took over some information about the Romanian village at the beginning of the 20th century from Mihail Sadoveanu's literature; the author's descriptions were then confronted with myths and stories from the traditional collective mentality. What I want is to illustrate one facet of the traditional Romanian belief system and of the way the Romanian peasant imagines his surrounding universe. This information shows us how the traditional man thinks, how he imagines certain things and provides information about his daily behavior. What I discovered at the end of my research is a dualistic belief system that combines Christian practices with some pagan beliefs. The relevance of this research consists in the fact that it highlights features of the Romanian village; thus, this article contributes to a possible study of the image of the village and of the Romanian peasant. The novelty of the research consists in the fact that it carefully analyzes the world of the village as seen in the literature from the interwar period.

  • Issue Year: LIX/2020
  • Issue No: LIX, 2
  • Page Range: 637-643
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Romanian