Trei "vârste" ale culturii române în afara granițelor

Abstrakt

In order to adequately comprehend the complex phenomenon of the exile, one must briefly describe the elements which have led to its historical configuration. The analyses of each new generation of critics and readers have generated diverse perceptions. Unless one understands the phenomenon in detail, Romanian exile literature faces the danger of being mislabelled as the literature of one group, as that of many others with a certain particularity but no more than that. Key questions such as bi- and plurilingualism, the political context, the genuine intention to preserve a sense of ethnic identity, and the struggle to promote a positive image of one’s country abroad are only a few of the aspects which cannot be ignored when discussing writers in Romanian literary exile. This phenomenon has accrued a history. The present paper traces three important “ages” of Romanian culture outside its borders despite the fact that not all the literary instances we  talk about can be exclusively included within the concept of “exile”. Employing the tools of literary history and literary criticism, and delving into the causality of the phenomena and connecting them diachronically and synchronically, this paper attempts a brief synthesis of Romanian cultural exports over history.