Literary history as bestseller: the life and opinions of a fraudulent philologue
cytuj
pobierz pliki
RIS BIB ENDNOTEWybierz format
RIS BIB ENDNOTEData publikacji: 05.2024
Romanica Cracoviensia, Tom 23 (2023), Tom 23, numer 4, s. 569 - 583
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843917RC.23.058.19371Autorzy
Literary history as bestseller: the life and opinions of a fraudulent philologue
In this article we reveal the publishing ventures of Octav Minar (1886-1967), one of the Romanian authors that was disesteemed by fellow literary historians on account of his counterfeiting acts such as forgery, plagiarism, plastography or trick photography. Related to the book market of interbellum Romania, Minar was frequently branded as the “man-of-the-day” while his publications followed the logic of the “hand-in-glove” ephemerides Notwithstanding the challenges of the term “bestseller,” we turned to it so as to better describe Minar’s cultural products as multiple-layered offers, catering for both low-brow and high-brow readership and seizing signals from both public’s expectations (myth-making, melodrama, sensation, narrative simplicity) and enormous patrimonial gaps (editing the classics, writing the recent authors’ biographies). After a careful examination of Minar’s works, we reached the conclusion that he was an exceptional entrepreneur of letters and, nonetheless, a literary historian endowed with a “melodramatic imagination” as well as with a playwright’s and a genre novelist’s plume. A swift intuition of marketing basics helped him realize, quite rapidly, that historical facts and documents could be merchandized: this is how his impressive collection of Romanian writers’ miscellanea was wrapped as a commodity for the public. If the juridical and moral aspects of his literary ventures were put in between brackets, we would discover an astonishing and ingenious personality who glided between different speech registers, and popularized literary history as a genre belonging to the big tent of mass culture. We should thus take into consideration that the logic of the paraliterary circuit can also be applied to literary history. Boiled down to essentials, counting on citations and on minimal critical comments, spiced with images (facsimile and pictures), Minar’s literary histories had their share in speeding the process of cultural literacy of average Romanian readers and in institutionalizing literary ideas.
***, 1926, Catalogul Editurei Librăriei Socec & Co S.A., București: Literatură-știință-artă.
Alexandrescu Sorin, 1964, Probleme de autenticitate în corespondenţa Eminescu publicată de Octav Minar, Revista de Istorie și Teorie Literară, 2: 375–384.
Andone Irina, 2002, „Farmec dureros”. Poetica eminesciană a contrariilor, Iaşi: Cronica.
Anghelescu Mircea, 2016, Mistificțiuni. Falsuri, farse, apocrife, pastișe, parodii, pseudonime și altemistificații în literatură, Bucharest: Spandugino.
Archer Jodie, Jockers Matthew L., 2016, The Bestseller Code. Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel, New York: St. Martin’s Press (ebook).
Bloom Clive, 2002, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900, London: Pagrave-Macmillan.
Borza Cosmin, Goldiș Alex, Tudurachi Adrian, 2020, Subgenurile romanului românesc. Laboratorul unei tipologii, Dacoromania Litteraria”, VII: 205–220.
Bot, Ioana (coord.), 2001, Mihai Eminescu, „poet național român”. Istoria şi anatomia unui mit cultural, Cluj‐Napoca: Dacia.
Bradley Arthur, and Rawes Alan, 2016, Introduction. Romanticizing Biography, (in:) Romantic Biography, Arthur Bradley, Alan Rawes (eds.), London: Routledge (ebook).
Brooks Peter, 1996, The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, New Heaven: Yale UP.
Bucur Marin, 1973, Mitul și mistificarea documentelor: Octav Minar, (in:) Marin Bucur, Istoriografia literară românească, Bucharest: Minerva, 228–229.
Burke Peter, 2001, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, London: Reaktion Books.
Călinescu Gheorghe, 1932 (2006), Octav Minar, necrofor eminescian, (in:) Gheorghe Călinescu, Opere. Publicistică I (1920–1932), Bucharest: Academia Română-Fundația Națională pentru Știință și Artă, 897–901.
Călinescu Gheorghe, 1932, Viața lui Mihai Eminescu, Bucharest: Cultura Națională.
Călinescu Matei, 1995, Cinci fețe ale modernității: modernism, avangardă, decadență, kitsch, postmodernism, Bucharest: Univers.
Caracostea Dumitru, 1987, Creativitatea eminesciană, Iași: Junimea.
Cioabă Cătălin (ed.), 2014, Mărturii despre Eminescu. Povestea unei vieți spuse de contemporani, Bucharest: Humanitas.
Cioculescu Șerban, 1972, Un recidivist încurajat: Octav Minar, (in:) Șerban Cioculescu, Aspecte literare contemporane. 1932–1947, Bucharest: Minerva, 624–626.
Coloșenco Mircea (ed.), 2011, Delictul literar: imitație, copie, plagiat, Iași: Timpul.
Creția Petru, 1998, Testamentul unui eminescolog, Humanitas: Bucharest.
Dulciu Dan Toma, 2014, Studiu introductiv, (in:) Dan Toma Dulciu (ed.), Octav Minar, Eminescu, poet-filosofCultura-personalitatea-poezia, https://www.academia.edu/7115823/Octav_Minar_Eminescu_Poet_Filosof_Cultura_Personalitatea_Poezia_Mss_XX538_Studiu_Introductiv_Dan_Toma_Dulciu (accessed in: 15.12.2022).
Fahraeus Anna, Yakalı-Çamoğlu Dikmen, 2011, Who are the Villainous Ones? An Introduction, (in:) Anna Fahraeus, Dikmen Yakalı-Çamoğlu (eds.), Villains and Villainy. Embodiments of Evil in Literature, Popular Culture and Media, Amsderdam-New York: Rodopi, VII–XII.
Gelder Ken, 2004, Popular Fiction. The logics and practices of a literary field, London: Routledge. https://humanitas.ro/humanitas/colectii/memoriijurnale.
https://polirom.ro/206-biografii-romantate.
Lovinescu Eugen, 1920, Critice, vol. 3, Bucharest: Alcalay & Co.
Lovinescu Eugen, 1935, Bălăuca, Bucharest: Adevărul.
Lovinescu Eugen, 1935, Mite, Bucharest: Adevărul.
Manega Miron, 2009, Primul film documentar despre Eminescu, https://www.poezie.ro/index.php/
multimedia/13891474/Primul_film_documentar_despre_Eminescu (accessed in: 15.12.2022).
Minar Octav, 1909, Eminescu comemorativ. Album artistic-literar întocmit de Octav Minar, Iași: Dacia.
Minar Octav, 1910, Filozoful Conta. Opere complete, Bucharest: C. Sfetea.
Minar Octav, 1911, Iașii în lumina vremurilor de altădată, Iași: Progresul.
Minar Octav, 1914, Eminescu în fața justiției, Bucharest: Librăriei Școalelor C. Sfetea.
Minar Octav, 1914, Patriotismul lui Eminescu (Geneza), Bucharest: Editura Librăriei Școalelor
Minar Octav, 1915, Eminescu-Veronica-Creangă (film), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbH7KDOQC8Y (accessed in: 15.12.2022).
Minar Octav, 1922, Cum a murit Eminescu. Pagini intime. Amintiri, scrisori și poezii inedite, Bucharest: Librăria Nouă.
Minar Octav, 1924, Dragoste și poezie. Ale lui pentru mine, ale mele pentru dânsul, Bucharest: Socec.
Minar Octav, 1924, Mihai Eminescu. Probleme și analize filozofice descoperite și commentate de Octav Minar, Bucharest: Imprimeria Fundației Culturale „Principele Carol”.
Minar Octav, 1925, Cum a iubit Eminescu. Amintiri, scrisori și poezii inedite, Bucharest: Librăria nouă.
Minar Octav 1936 (1991), Simfonia venețiană, Bucharest: Ploscău.
Minar Octav, not dated, Delavrancea apărând pe Caragiale. Procesul de calomnie prin presă, Bucharest: Socec&Co.
Minar Octav, not dated, Eminescu. Aspecte din vieața și opera poetului, Bucharest: Clasic și Modern.
Minar Octav, not dated, George Coșbuc. Biografia și opera poetică, Bucharest: Autor.
Negoițescu Ion, 1968, Poezia lui Eminescu, Bucharest: Editura Pentru Literatură.
Noica Constantin, 1978, Eminescu sau gânduri despre omul deplin al culturii române, Bucharest: Cartea Românească.
Patraș Antonio, 2013, Scriitorul și umbra sa. Geneza formei în romanele lui E. Lovinescu, vol. II, Iași: Institutul European.
Patras Antonio, 2017, The Anecdote in The History of Romanian Literature from Its Origins to the Present, Caietele Echinox, 33: 73–87.
Patras Antonio, Patras Roxana, 2019, Theory in the Flesh of Practice: Anecdote and Portraits in the Histories of Romanian Literature, Transylvanian Review, 28(2): 87–100.
Patras Roxana, 2017, Spații eminesciene. Studii de poetică și stilistică, Iași: Timpul.
Patras Roxana, 2020, Pentru reabilitarea literaturii de consum, Convorbiri Literare, 289: 139–142.
Radway Janice, 1991, Reading the Romance. Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Revised Edition, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Șercan Emilia, 2017, Fabrica de doctorate sau Cum se surpă fundamentele unei nații, Bucharest: Humanitas.
Simion Eugen (ed.), 2019, Dicționarul General al Literaturii Române (DGLR), M-O, second edition, Bucharest: Muzeul Literaturii Române.
Sutherland John, 2007, Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction, London: Oxford UP.
Suțu Rudolf, 2015, Iașii de odinioară, Bucharest: Corint.
Terian Andrei et al., 2020, Genurile romanului românesc (1901–1932). O analiză cantitativă, Transilvania, 10: 53–64.
Vlad C., 1932, Eminescu din punct de vedere psihanalitic, Bucharest: Cartea Românească.
Zarifopol-Illias Christina (ed.), 1999, Mihai Eminescu, Veronica Micle, Dulcea mea Doamnă / Eminul meu iubit. Corespondență inedită, Iași: Polirom.
Informacje: Romanica Cracoviensia, Tom 23 (2023), Tom 23, numer 4, s. 569 - 583
Typ artykułu: Oryginalny artykuł naukowy
Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza din Iași
Rumunia
Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza din Iași
Rumunia
Publikacja: 05.2024
Status artykułu: Otwarte
Licencja: CC BY
Udział procentowy autorów:
Korekty artykułu:
-Języki publikacji:
AngielskiLiczba wyświetleń: 166
Liczba pobrań: 180