Navigating the Flux: The Many Routes to Romanian Literature

The aim of this book review symposium is twofold. First, it offers a critical discussion of the volume Romanian Literature as World Literature (edited by Mircea Martin, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian), in relation to other comparative literary histories, on the one hand, and to the Romanian literary historiography, on the other hand. Several critics and scholars of Romanian and comparative literature, as well as two of the RLWL editors, comment on the book. Second, the dossier outlines a methodological debate, as the volume under scrutiny pleads for a paradigm shift in reading national literatures in the broader frame of world literature. Some contributors address key-issues such as “methodological nationalism” in Romanian literary research, the “exportability” of Romanian authors, and the politics of cross-cultural comparison, while others share their own academic experience in teaching Romanian literature as world literature.