| Abstrakt: |
The present analysis has as a starting point the existence of human models representative of literary Balkanism, thus theorized by Mircea Muthu: the tragic type, the wandering sage, the outlaw and the upstart. The type of the wandering sage is illustrated, among others, in Ioan Groșan's novel, "One Hundred Years at the Gates of the Orient", a representative work for the 1980's prose. Groșan's work, published in 1992, has the merit of anticipating - mutatis mutandis - Umberto Eco's novel, "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" (published in 2004), the common element being the game of intertextuality. Eco's character turns into a detective who wants to discover information about his own teenage biography, claiming that he has no feelings, but that he has, instead, only memorable sayings. Groșan's text proposes a main epic thread, represented by the pilgrimages of the monks Metodiu and Iovănuț, who have the secret mission to reach Rome, everything happening in the 17th century. In this novel in which lucidity and self-referentiality become artifices specific to postmodernism, the monastic tandem successfully illustrates the typology of the wandering sage. First of all, Metodiu, Iovănuț's oldest companion, bears the suggestion of the names of the monks Cyril and Methodius, known for their mission of evangelizing the Slavs. In addition, the relationship between the spiritual master and the disciple is reminiscent, to a certain extent, of the connection between Guglielmo of Baskerville and Adso of Melk, Eco's characters in "The Name of the Rose." The defining element of Groșan's work is given, therefore, by the sapient adventure of his picaresque heroes, but, more importantly, by the science with which the author manoeuvres the textual "machinery". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
