Space of Periphery in Romanian Interwar Novel

Space of Periphery in Romanian Interwar Novel

Luca, Daniel

The novelists dealing with the issue of periphery aim to present as accurate as possible, the real world as a harsh, tough, hermetic one, shaped by very particular rules. The novel of suburbia is, above all, one of peripheral areas. They emerge as outcomes of the city‘s growth and are usually populated by a dirty, mixed crowd. We may say that dirtiness, misery, garbage represent the specificity, even the constant of this marginal world. The characters of the Romanian novel of periphery live, paradoxically, two-folded: namely, in a torturing, miserable, destructive present, that we may undoubtedly call as awful; but also in a pink, happy future hardly loomed among the alcohol steams or the smoke of sordid workshops, a desired future, ―invested‖ in a love story which, eventually, ends in crimes, extra-conjugal adventures, violence. In short, they project all in a ―golden future‖. What I am trying to do in this research is to show the representative areas of the periphery – like the pub, the brothel, the church, the street – as they are reflected in Romanian interwar novels on such topics, novels that follow the social reality of the time, with an almost naturalistic fidelity.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

46