Reshaping Identities in Romanian Mid-19th Century Culture
Reshaping Identities in Romanian Mid-19th Century Culture

Summary/Abstract: In Culture and Imperialism Eduard Said illustrated the fact that there is no culture to be regarded only within ‘national limits’. Mid 19-century Romanian culture is an exemplary proof that this post-colonial interpretation over literature needs to be fully adopted by contemporary literary scholars, as the novel phenomenon in Romania had been ‘foreign’ par excellence from the very start, being imported (and eventually translated and adapted) from French culture. Within this context, the exponential demand of women readers for sentimental/popular romance triggered an array of reactions in the public sphere of the age, most of them negative, generated by women’s trespassing of traditional barriers within the traditionally private realm. In view of the above, my aim is to illustrate how this shift eventually leads to a new way of living within the boundaries of the imported modernity, when women forced into being – via their reading practices – the revolution of modernity in our cultural space; thus they repositioned themselves within the center of social and cultural phenomena, disseminating new values, new ways of thinking. Consequently, my paper aims to offer an imagological analysis on how the impressive body of women readers of mid 19-century novels play a crucial role in shaping the new Romanian (trans)national identity.

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