De la canonul optzecist la canonul transnațional

The present article will try to highlight a series of innovations brought about by Mihai Iovănel’s History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020 in the current evaluation and critical interpretation of Romanian literature. Singular in terms of the length of the period under scrutiny and the general objectives pursued by its author, the History views literature as an overarching institution governed by its own mechanisms. The latter are both extraliterary – drawing on historical, sociological, and critical markers – and artistic – explorable by invoking the aesthetic standpoint alone. By discussing the insistence on the first type of mechanisms, I will present one of the major elements of novelty brought by the volume in the contemporary cultural landscape of Romania. Placing myself, therefore, on the position of the “local” reader, i.e., as a connoisseur of the evolution of the contemporary Romanian literary system, I will examine, on the one hand, the ways in which Mihai Iovănel discusses and redefines prevalent concepts in literary theory and criticism, while on the other, I will perform the critical – but also pedagogic – role of the expert who wants to present to a “foreign” public – belonging to another country and culture, that is – the national literature as “literature of the world.” Iovănel employs a set of adequate and representative instruments of study and analysis in showing that Romanian literature is a cultural phenomenon engaging in a constant dialogue with European and universal paradigms and models.