Romanul comunismului românesc înainte și după Istoria lui Mihai Iovănel

Abstract

This paper makes a case for analyzing the way in which the novel of Communism is approached by Mihai Iovănel in his History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020. This is a topic that was intensely discussed by Romanian literary criticism in Post-communism and represents the weakness of Romanian literature, either by it not being able to give a sufficiently convincing novel, or by not being able to agree upon how this novel should look. Accordingly, the critics had difficulties in labeling any novel that had been published after ‘89s as “the novel of communism.” The first part of the article is a panning of recent discussions about this term in relation to the analysis made by Iovănel in his History. The second part aims to trace out a network of this type of novel in the literatures of Central and Eastern Europe and to try to identify its particularities through a comparative analysis. The last part consists of a study case of the novels Acasă, pe câmpia Armaghedonului [At home, on the Field of Armageddon] by Marta Petreu and Bureți de Fag [Oyster Mushrooms] by Mihai Duțescu. The latter has been published after the History and both novels are analyzed from the perspective of the novel of communism.