Page 19 - Potocco, Marcello, ed. 2018. Literatura v preseku družbe, družba v preseku literature. The Crossroads of Literature and Social Praxis. Zbornik povzetkov. Book of Abstracts. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem
P. 19
efan Baghiu the crossroads of literature and social praxis, ljubljana, 2018 17
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
The Functions of Socialist Realism:
Subgenres of Translated Fiction in Postwar Eastern
Europe
The main difference between socialist realism and Western fiction
is often considered to be the degree of literariness (aesthetic la
bor vs. social purpose) of the two models of fiction: as Boris Groys
puts it, “the central opposition operative in modernism was there
fore high culture versus mass (or ’low’) culture” (A Style and a Half.
Socialist Realism between Modernism and Postmodernism, Dobrenko,
Lausen, 1997). Socialist realism has always been declared a mass cul-
ture movement, but few studies have succeeded in defining its true
structure as being mass-addressed. This paper aims to analyze the
genres and subgenres of socialist realist fiction translated in Ro
mania (quantitative approach) and Eastern Europe (using general
readers for socialist realism fiction) with a view to acquiring a more
comprehensive perspective of the social purpose and functions
of socialist realist literature (since, as Itamar Even-Zohar argues,
translated literature is “a most active system within” a polysystem
– Polysystem Studies, 1990). As Gleb Tsipursky remarks, “after the
October Revolution, the Bolsheviks made state-sponsored popu
lar culture a major sphere of activity for the Soviet party-state” (So-
cialist Fun, 2016). This led to many attempts at controlling popular
and youth novels as central part of the ideological program with
in the USSR and also in its entire sphere of influence. At the same
time, this struggle should be opposed/connected to the develop
ment of popular fiction in Western cultures, as the two opposite
cultural systems shared several important similarities: if we consid
er that the most translated authors of fiction in the Stalinist Roma
nian cultural system were Alexandre Dumas, Jack London or Mark
Twain, the gap between Western and Eastern popular fiction no
longer seems so great. This paper uses Distant Reading techniques
(mainly graphs and maps) to describe and explain the ways in which
popular fiction was imported in the Socialist Realism in Romania
and Eastern Europe and how it modified the interwar cultural sys
tem/how it related to Western cultural systems.
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
The Functions of Socialist Realism:
Subgenres of Translated Fiction in Postwar Eastern
Europe
The main difference between socialist realism and Western fiction
is often considered to be the degree of literariness (aesthetic la
bor vs. social purpose) of the two models of fiction: as Boris Groys
puts it, “the central opposition operative in modernism was there
fore high culture versus mass (or ’low’) culture” (A Style and a Half.
Socialist Realism between Modernism and Postmodernism, Dobrenko,
Lausen, 1997). Socialist realism has always been declared a mass cul-
ture movement, but few studies have succeeded in defining its true
structure as being mass-addressed. This paper aims to analyze the
genres and subgenres of socialist realist fiction translated in Ro
mania (quantitative approach) and Eastern Europe (using general
readers for socialist realism fiction) with a view to acquiring a more
comprehensive perspective of the social purpose and functions
of socialist realist literature (since, as Itamar Even-Zohar argues,
translated literature is “a most active system within” a polysystem
– Polysystem Studies, 1990). As Gleb Tsipursky remarks, “after the
October Revolution, the Bolsheviks made state-sponsored popu
lar culture a major sphere of activity for the Soviet party-state” (So-
cialist Fun, 2016). This led to many attempts at controlling popular
and youth novels as central part of the ideological program with
in the USSR and also in its entire sphere of influence. At the same
time, this struggle should be opposed/connected to the develop
ment of popular fiction in Western cultures, as the two opposite
cultural systems shared several important similarities: if we consid
er that the most translated authors of fiction in the Stalinist Roma
nian cultural system were Alexandre Dumas, Jack London or Mark
Twain, the gap between Western and Eastern popular fiction no
longer seems so great. This paper uses Distant Reading techniques
(mainly graphs and maps) to describe and explain the ways in which
popular fiction was imported in the Socialist Realism in Romania
and Eastern Europe and how it modified the interwar cultural sys
tem/how it related to Western cultural systems.
