Rewriting Caragiale: Textual Masks in the Mirror of Contemporaneity
Rewriting Caragiale: Textual Masks in the Mirror of Contemporaneity

Summary/Abstract: The author of the present study takes into account maybe the most dynamic aspect of the exegetic polemics concerning I.L. Caragiale’s work as a playwright, the contemporaneity of his work. Rewriting Caragiale: Textual Masks in the Mirror of Contemporaneity shows how this theme acquires today, in the light of the recent theories concerning the origin of the literary work, new dimensions and significations. Because, if one can state that beyond any doubt William Shakespeare is the most re-written playwright in the universal literature, a similar consideration may be in the case of I.L. Caragiale, which shows that in the recent studies he is the most re-written writer from and in the Romanian literature. This kind of action of rewriting, built in the ancestry of the formalist and structuralist contributions (we make a reference here to the theory of hypertextuality, elaborated by Gérard Genette in Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré and to the Bahtinian theory of dialogism) is also the case of professor Ioan Constantinescu’s play, who offers a creative and modern interpretation of the characters and of the action from Conu’ Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea. His play, the one that follows the paradigm of Caragiale’s comical drama, shows an interesting predisposition towards a methaphorical level of understanding: Ioan Constantinescu did not think to shed a light on the truths of the dramatic ideologic change from December ‘89; he was interested in revealing the conspirationist side of the intellectual and the drama he lived in the ‘90s, being forced to adapt to a system with new rules and characters in which he could not find himself anymore. However, the present study emphasizes how a parody with an explicit model such as Bisidentul is not intended to be a malicious one, a demolishing one; on the contrary, it respects and even honors its model, contributing to new forms of conceiving the literary work.

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