The Adopted Child of the Latin Gens: Genealogical Imagery in B. Fundoianu’s Work

Abstract

Revisiting the dual, bio-cultural, imagery ingrained in B. Fundoianu’s essays, engendering a genealogical narrative of literary history, may help us re-evaluate B. Fundoianu’s vision on the Romanian identity, too hastily explained by the “selfcolonizing” metaphor. A double perspective, euchronistic and anachronistic, will be engaged to render the complexities and contradictions of his approach. While the biologist vocabulary sends back to the 19th-century essentialist philosophies of identity, the focus on the East-West encounters resulting in the hybridization of cultural heritages invites fresher re-readings from the standpoint of transnational theories.