The peasant and the nation plot: a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century

Borza, Cosmin; Gârdan, Daiana; Modoc, Emanuel

doi:10.1017/s0956793322000140

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The ideological process also constructed through discourse a relation to the lower classes, especially the peasants, that perpetuated their subjection, setting the masses squarely in another camp from those who spoke for them and precluding a new political relationship among groups. (Verdery, 1995, p.71) More recent work has argued in the same direction (see Borza, 2022 for the distance between the rural world and the elites as expressed in interwar novels). Efforts to close the gap were unsuccessful throughout the 20 th century.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 90%

Decline of a national icon: Derogatory representations of the Romanian peasant in recent television programs

Șerbănuță

2024

SJRS

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Intellectuals and artists have been crafting an image of the Romanian peasant as the building block of the nation since the second half of the 19th century. The process went hand in hand with the modernization of the elites, and the peasant was thus mainly ‘discovered’ within the cultural framework of Romanticism, as the ‘eternal autochthon’ (Mihăilescu,2017, p.173), creator of the specific Kultur of the Romanian people. However, dramatic social transformations such as the difficult transition period of the ʹ90s have shifted the focus from a complimentary representation of the peasant as the national foundation – and all the positive characteristics of his/her habitus in terms of material, spiritual and aesthetic values– to a rather alienated and anachronistic figure coming across as a burden that has to be carried into modernity by the enlightened social strata. This paper uses visual analysis, grounded in Barthesian semiotics, to explore the changes in modes of representation of the peasant in popular media from the depository of national values to a marginal lower class, striving to keep up with the urban lifestyle. Various portrayals of peasants in TV series and sketches, movies and memes point to the degradation of the peasant figure in the public imagination. Images of poverty, bad taste and a lack of hygiene seem to pollute the bodies, garments and home environments of the rural characters, with a toxic effect on their language and behaviour as well. Although there have always been derogatory images of the peasants in the discourse of the elites (Mihăilescu also coined the term ‘domestic primitive’ for the representation associated with the historical tendency to portray the peasants as a backward population incapable of progress), in recent times this tendency has prevailed, especially with the rural-themed successful TV series Las Fierbinți, for mainly ideological reasons which will be discussed. Thus, apart from deconstructing a national myth, I argue that the representation of contemporary peasants and their degenerating habitus also contributes to the polarization in the Romanian society.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 90%

Decline of a national icon: Derogatory representations of the Romanian peasant in recent television programs

Șerbănuță

2024

SJRS

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“…This has been done before in some countries, as done by Rajbhandari (2019) on Nationalism and the farm novel in South Africa, 1883-2004. In addition, Borza et al (2023) also reviewed the plot of peasants and nations in the context of distant readings from Romanian rural novels of the first half of the twentieth century. As for di Indonesia, literary works containing the message of nationalism also adorn the development of Indonesian literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Spirit of Nationalism in Literature: A Case Study of Students in Yogyakarta

Sudigdo

Pamungkas

Hastangka³

et al. 2023

Stud. Learn. Teach.

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This research is an effort to investigate the understanding of prospective student teachers in the PGSD Study Program at "AS" Universities in Yogyakarta. The focus of the research is the understanding of nationalism and the implementation of literature as a medium of nationalism. This study used quantitative methods. Research data was conducted by conducting surveys and interviews. The survey was conducted using Google Forms media. Interviews were conducted with 30 students. The results showed that students at "U.S." colleges do not all understand national identity. Of the 30 respondents, there was 1 student who did not understand the identity of the nation. However, overall they have read many books on national identity. Students also agreed that the spirit of nationalism is an important factor that every citizen must have. In addition, students agree that the values of nationalism can be taught through literature. As a form of agreement about it, they have also implemented the practice of making poems with the theme of national identity as a representation of the spirit of nationalism. The novelty of this research is that there has been no previous research that investigates the understanding of nationalism for students, especially in the field of literature in the PGSD Study Program.

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Obiectul artei și problema reprezentării romilor în literatură

Dumitru

2023

transilvania

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In the first part of this essay I propose a synthesis on how art (and the discourse that accompanies it, including literary theory) has modified its “object” over the centuries. If for the classical theories of art and even for some produced in romantic period the object of art is the man-in-general, the theories of the 19th century (I will privilege those active on the territory of Romania) progressively particularize the object of art. This becomes either the “citizen” of a nation (in the case of Romanian literature, the object of literary art should have been the national hero or the “Romanian” in general), either the majority class (the peasantry), or the class considered the most active or favored by evolution or by the historical moment (the bourgeoisie in the first part of 20th century, workers from the moment Romania entered the zone of Soviet influence, after the Second World War), or groups or social entities not previously represented in art/ literature. In a second part of the essay, I focus on the case illustrated by the problem of the representation of Roma in literature (particularly in Romanian literature) and its correlates.

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The peasant and the nation plot: a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century

Cited by 3 publications

References 28 publications

Decline of a national icon: Derogatory representations of the Romanian peasant in recent television programs

Decline of a national icon: Derogatory representations of the Romanian peasant in recent television programs

The Spirit of Nationalism in Literature: A Case Study of Students in Yogyakarta

Obiectul artei și problema reprezentării romilor în literatură

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