The Making of Modern Romanian Culture: Literacy and the Development of National Identity

(Paperback)

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Description

How do literacy and the development of literary culture promote the development of a national identity This well-researched and readable book explores the rise of Romanian-language literary, educational and printing institutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bringing out a story that has not been fully explored in English. He builds on and engages with current knowledge about print culture, modernization, national identity and state formation, to make an original contribution to ongoing debates in these areas.

Reviews

'An enormously erudite study... for anyone interested in the origins of modern Romanian literary production and education in the context of the Enlightenment, modernization, and state-formation this is an indispensable book.' Irina Livezeanu, Associate Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh. 'Alex Drace-Francis has produced a highly accurate and often outstandingly subtle piece of research. This British scholar observes things that his Romanian colleagues, being too familiar with them, have tended to overlook.' Ovidiu Pecican, Professor of History, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania. 'Solid and extremely well informed, Alex Drace-Francis's book not only brings together a great mass of information and hypotheses, but also asks important questions about a cultural legacy whose investigation is still plagued by stereotypes.' Mircea Anghelescu, Professor of Literature, University of Bucharest, Romania.

Author Bio

Alex Drace-Francis is Associate Professor of the Literary and Cultural History of Modern Europe at the University of Amsterdam.