Ţiganiada, formă inedită de manifestare a spiritului iluminist
The Gypsy Epic Poem, a Unique Form for the Illuminist Spirit

Summary/Abstract: Ioan Budai-Deleanu was an encyclopaedic man, as the Enlightenment thinkers recommended, and he was preoccupied with the problems of his time, such as national history, the evolution of the Romanian language and the development of literature. This erudite finds his true calling in literary creation and becomes a writer dedicated to Şcoala Ardeleană, and one of the most important cultural masters at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the next. His best known literary work is the epic poem Ţiganiada, subtitled Poemation eroi-comico-satiric, an allegory built on numerous levels, in which the author gives an artistic synthesis, in the comic, satiric and parodic registers, the Enlightenment ideas, criticising mentality, and feudal institutions with all their moral defects. Moreover, Ţiganiada is an impressive demonstration about the poetic virtues of Romanian language, Ioan Budai-Deleanu being the first Romanian poet of European range, the author of a masterpiece which is not very well-known, unfortunately.

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