Postmodernism vs. Tyranny: A Romanian Li

The course will examine the legendary Generation of the 1980s (the Blue Jeans generation) in Romanian literature, and its relationship with the Beat generation in American poetry on one hand, and with American Postmodernism in fiction, on the other.

The course will begin with a focus on Romanian literature of the 1980s and the suffocating atmosphere in which young writers were forced to live, their day-to-day struggles with the dictatorship and censorship, as well as their strong determination to preserve their inner freedom and the essential independence of the literary text. The discovery of the Beat poets, for example, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder etc., was a game-changer for Romanian poetry, introducing a fresh breath of air and a new poetic attitude. Like the Beat poets in San Francisco, who fought against the conservative establishment during the Vietnam War, the poets of the 1980s generation used the power of language against the Communist dictatorship, creating a poetry that was a mixture of European surrealism and the avantgarde, and the spirit of the U.S. Beat poets. The course will examine the work of the foremost Romanian poets of the period, including Traian T. Coșovei, Mariana Marin, Magda Cârneci, Florin Iaru, and Ion Stratan.

In the same historical period, the prose writers of the 1980s became interested in the philosophy of language, writing sophisticated texts under the influence of the literature of the Left Bank, the Nouveau Roman, the Oulipo group, etc. The new Postmodern American writers were also a huge influence on their works. John Barthes, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, and Thomas Pynchon, among others, were key figures for Romanian writers of that period. We will first examine the Postmodern philosophical ideas as expressed by Gianni Vattimo, Guy Scarpetta, Jean Francois Lyotard, Francis Fukuyama etc., then move on to the literary concepts that define postmodernity, as discussed in the work of theorists like Ihab Hassan, Matei Calinescu, Gerald Graff, Douwe Fokkema etc. Finally, the course will consider the short stories and novels by Mircea Nedelciu, Gheorghe Craciun, Ioana Parvulescu, Cristian Teodorescu, Gheorghe Iova, etc.

The course will be conducted in English. All required readings will be posted on Courseworks.