Abstract
The present contribution discusses how the Scandinavian cultural space was reflected in Romanian periodicals through translation. Drawing on Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system analysis, I outline a facet of interperipherality within the “European world-system,” discussing how the two “internal peripheries” (the “European South(-East)” and “The Far North”) managed to establish a form of interconnectedness, and determine the channels through which this transnational network was cultivated a la longue durée. The analysis focuses on the late 19th and early 20th century, when both cultural spaces were marked by particular patterns of “combined and uneven development” (to borrow Warwick Research Collective’s use of Trotsky’s concept), whereby regional centres of development (manifested through social emancipation, literacy, higher living standards, etc. For instance: Bucharest, Jassy, Sibiu in Romania; Copenhagen, Stockholm, Christiania/Oslo in Scandinavia) coexisted with severe underdevelopment, inequality, and labour migration. Using the pioneering methodological contributions made by Franco Moretti, Katherine Bode, and Matthew L. Jockers to the field of Digital Humanities, the study makes use of The Arcanum Periodical Archive (a digitized archive containing the most relevant Romanian periodicals from the 19th century onwards) in order to outline a Scandinavian “translationscape” (Smith) across Romanian periodicals, paying heed to the major hubs of translation and providing visual representations of their distribution. The investigation looks both at hypercanonical (Damrosch) authors – e.g., Ibsen, Strindberg, or Andersen – and at authors belonging to the counter- and shadow canon, employed in substantiating the different “literary regimes of relevance” (Tihanov) of Romanian literature.
Presenters
Ovio OlaruLecturer, PhD, Department for Anglo-American and German Studies, Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, Romania
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Interperipherality, Combined And Uneven development, Romanian Periodicals, Regimes of Relevance
