Perspectives on a Philologic and Academic Cannon on Virgil Nemoianu’s Theories

Abstract

The problem of the Literary Canon is stated by the Romanian theorist Virgil Nemoianu several times and from different critical perspectives of the time – each perspective is seeking to reflect an era and its influences, a certain cultural and artistic typology, the cultural projects and products of a canonical era, the spirituality and politics of the time, as well as the ideological disputes that re-establish from one century to another great canonical European literatures. Systematized thematically and through editorials published between 1967 and 2011, the Romanian professor’s concerns related to the canon are written with great precision – enlightening philological and historical details. Into the same unison with the educated voices of the great universities in Europe and America, Virgil Nemoianu will start the discussion about the phenomenology of the literary Canon by using the tools of referring to the European literary details and referring to the European cultural studies. As a framework, within his academic concerns, there is the idea of complexities and cultural continuities, which together with the ideas of aesthetic and moral emergences, both creates veritable encyclopedic studies that the Romanian theorist he dedicated to Minor European Romanticism, then to Structuralism, and finally to Postmodernism and cultural Globalism. By discussing the importance of the canonical lists, as well as by proposing provocative ideas supposed to aim at the correct understanding of the academic curriculum, Virgil Nemoianu initiates a debate that even gives us the opportunity to discuss the cultural phenomena that determine the modification of the canon. In particular, the Romanian professor gives interest to a canon in perpetual transformation – The Hospitable Canon – a hospitable canon, which involves transitions from a rigidity of the interpretation of literature – to an interpretive plurality. Therefore, these methodological filters have a catalytic role, becoming reagents that lead to a new interpretive synthesis. They also manage to lead to the theoretical core of Professor V. Nemoianu’s reflections: the canon and canonicity allow the observation of the secondary, the marginal, the interdependencies and the intertextualism within the canonical literatures – towards to redefine the social, art and spirituality.