Postcolonial Readings of Romanian Identity Narratives

Romanian identity narratives downplay the colonial setup of the country’s past. Yet the postcolonial paradigm helps readers grasp national self-identification in modern Romanian culture. Anglo-American reporting on interwar Romania and Romanian historical fiction expound on the postcolonial and adversarial rhetoric of Romanian colonial history. The book offers a view of national self-identification in the literary culture of twentieth century Romania with a special focus on the postcolonial paradigm. Romanian identity narratives downplay the colonial setup of the country’s past and the colonial past goes unmentioned in the country’s historiography and popular culture. However, the postcolonial paradigm helps readers grasp national self-identification in modern Romanian culture. The author analyses how Anglo-American reporting on interwar Romania and later Romanian historical fiction establish notions such as hybridity and cultural overlap as conducive to the making of modern Romanian culture.