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WORKSHOP:
Comparative Cultural Studies 4
Aspects of Literature and Perspectives of CultureChair: Peter Petro (The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
Regional Attitudes in the Literary Movement in Bessarabia (1918-1944)
Tofan, Alina (University Ion Creanga, Chisinau, Romania)
In her presentation "Regionale Einstellungen in der literarischen Bewegung in Bessarabien (1918-1944)" Alina Tofan presents the idea of national characteristics as an organic substance, which has contributed substantially to the consolidation of Great Romania. This idea determined the activity of Bessarabian writers and the cultural orientation of Romanian society. The literary production of Bessarabian writers after more than a hundred years of Russian control (1812-1918) had a clear special status in the total structure of Romanian literature, and it developed in the interwar period under the sign of traditionalism and regionalism. Although the ideology of regionalism had already existed in the 1920s, the political and cultural character of this trend did not become openly and clearly evident until the beginning of the 1930s. In the Bessarabian literary movement, cultural regionalism does not represent an expression of an inability to deal with general themes, but rather a search for a national character. For one thing it is not to be overlooked that this tendency was no exception in that epoch. Important for Bessarabian cultural regionalism was the following: realistic research, which made possible a correlation with the tendencies of world literature. The literary press of Bessarabia in the years 1918-1940 had the task of defending the continuity of Romania by means of cultural regionalism. In this way it contributed to the revival of the autochthonous intellectual life and to the integration of Bessarabian literary production into the overall Romanian cultural context of the interwar period.
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