Cities, Networks, and Hierarchies: A Systematic Model of Romanian Novel

Abstract

This article sets out to observe the manner in which using the city as a narrative scenario can determine the creation of a systemic model of knowledge. Based on Morillo’s theory that urban spaces can be analyzed by observing the interaction between the networks they belong to and the hierarchies they form, eventually becoming “hubs of knowledge,” we try to prove that the Romanian novels of the late nineteenth century and the interwar period are valuable points of reference for sketching a systemic model of the South-East European space. The specificity of Romanian literature, reflecting historical conditions and relations with empires such as the Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman empires, as well as the constitution of labor relations through the transition from rural to accelerated urbanization produces a viable matrix. These aspects can be encountered in the novels of Romanian writers such as Ioan Slavici and Liviu Rebreanu, who reflect the reality of the Transylvanian space and the relations between the communities of Romanians, Germans, Saxons or Swabians, Hungarians and Jews, to Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, the writer who creates the image of Bucharest as part of the European urban network, even if it is hierarchically subordinate to Paris.