Methodology and Objectives

Methodologically speaking, the evaluation of method transfers and ideology realised by Romanian criticism, theory and literary historiography from the European and North-American cultural area during the period requires a double approach:

  1. A historical and comparative approach which is meant to identify, explain and evaluate the quantity and quality of methodological and ideological transfers made by the Romanian Literary Research during the above-mentioned period. In the framework of this approach, the working method will be an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary one; its meta-critical profile will surely be determined by the specifics of the critical methods which are supposed to be analysed (case specific: structural, thematic-phenomenological, existentialist, psycho-analytical, stylish, narratological, etc.).
  2. An ideological and sociological approach which is meant to define the political and identity consequences of method transfers by referring to the polarization of the field of Romanian criticism in the temporal segment which is analysed. In this sense, we will mainly deal with the theory of cultural fields introduced by Pierre Bourdieu (1992) and completed by Brubaker, Sapiro and Kauppi (2005), as well as with transversal approaches such as cultural studies.

The connection between the two methodological components will be based on the assumption - highly exploited in the top international literary research at the moment – that, through their nature, methodological patterns determine certain ideological attitudes and so generate a certain way of structuring the critical field. From this perspective, our research will deal with some objectives and results which will be presented as follows:

  1. A documentary study regarding the degree of impact of Occidental methods and ideologies on the Romanian literary research between 1965-2010. In this study we will deal with discussions from the literary media, with prefaces and editorials dedicated to the main European and North-American volumes of criticism translated into Romanian, and with Romanian research with theoretical/meta-critical potential from the last five decades.
  2. An analytical explicative study whose purpose is to rebuilt the structure and the ideological dynamics of the Romanian field of criticism between 1965-2010. The analysis will be made from a cross-disciplinary perspective whose main purpose will be to connect the methodological patterns defined by the previous study to the reigning ideologies of that time (for the period 1965-1989: the rest of the socialist realism, synchronized socialist aestheticism, the national-communism and especially its extension protochronist, incipient postmodernism; for the period 1990-2010: the rests of the national-communism, aesthetic revisionism, apolitical attitude, postmodernism, cultural relativism and political correctness, soft ethnocentrism and globalization).
  3. A documentary study meant to determine – from the perspective of the current knowledge status – the complexity of methodological patterns introduced by the European and North-American Literary Research during the mentioned period, as well as the ideological correlations of the respective patterns. Here we will take into account the methodological directions in question, directly or indirectly, the Romanian papers of criticism and meta-criticism from the period 1965-2010 (existentialism, structuralism, thematism, psycho-criticism, myth-criticism, post-structuralism, etc.), and certain disciplinary and ideological aspects less discussed in Romania (feminism and gender criticism, Ethical Criticism, eco-criticism, cyber-criticism, etc.), together with the cultural politics promoted by these patterns.
  4. A comparative critical study whose purpose is to analyse the ways of methodological transfer of patterns of European and North-American origin in Romanian Literary Research during the last five decades. This study will be made from an interdisciplinary perspective and will evaluate the degree of comprehension and assimilation but also the way of operating the main Occidental methodological patterns (structuralism, thematism, existentialism, sociological criticism, psycho-criticism, mythical archetypal criticism, stylistics and narratology, textualism, post-structuralism, deconstructivism, New Historicism, cultural studies etc.) in text interpretation, conceptual segmentation and Romanian historical-literary contextualisation. Here we will mainly focus on aspects regarding the discrepancy, distortion, hybridisation and reformulation of the patterns borrowed once they were transferred in the Romanian cultural environment.
  5. A comparative critical study which will analyse in parallel the ideological effects of the methodological methods previously established in Romanian culture from the period 1965-2010 and in Occidental democratic cultures (West-European and North-American). The research will be made from an inter- and cross-disciplinary perspective, will confront the cultural politics generated by theoretical, critical and historiographical patterns in both reference frames (Romanian and Occidental) and will deal with topics such as synchronicity, anachronism, hybridisation, cultural politisation and depolitisation.
  6. A synthetical (critical, explicative, comparative and prospective) study which shall unify the acquisitions of previous research works with the aim of offering an overall evaluation of the transfers of Occidental methodological and ideological patterns in Romanian criticism, theory and literary historiography from the period 1965-2010. Reaching this goal coincides practically with the end of our research, which will offer a global diagnosis of the current status and level of the respective disciplines in Romania by explaining the causes which generated this and by proposing solutions for going over certain blockages the autochthonous literary research is confronting with at the time being. In other words, this result will show us the opportunity to increase the performance and relevance of Romanian philology nationally and internationally.