MYTHS, FAIRY TALES, LEGENDS, AND THE FORMATION OF THE ROMANIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING THE 19th CENTURY
MYTHS, FAIRY TALES, LEGENDS, AND THE FORMATION OF THE ROMANIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING THE 19th CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: Romanian fairy tales, stories and myths came to the attention of writers, especially since the second half of the nineteenth century, in the era of the great classics, Junimea and the beginnings of the Romanian Academy. Highly active in collecting fairy tales and then in transcribing them in the form of cult fairy tales were: Ioan Gh. Sbiera, Vasile Alecsandri, Alexandru Odobescu, Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici, Ion Luca Caragiale, Nicolae Filimon, Ion Creangă and Petre Ispirescu. Folk tales and stories were collected from all regions of the country, transposed in a form easily accessible to the general public, but still continuing to retain a local air, popularized en masse by the written press and by the introduction to the curriculum. In this way they managed, in less than a generation, to spread en masse the consciousness of unity, language and customs of Romanians from all regions of the country. The fundamental myths, beyond the message of the literary text, usually transmit a hidden, cryptic message, this being in full agreement with the western tradition! If we look closely we notice that three of the four myths chosen to become fundamental myths of the Romanian nation represents, in a kind of allegorical triptych, the main steps in the evolution of the Romanian nation from the beginning to the formation of the Romanian state, as they were understood by the Romanian intellectuals of the 19th century.

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