Presă și policier: o diagnoză culturală a practicii de lectură
Rezumat
Press and Policier: A Cultural Diagnosis of the Practice of Reading
Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which the reception and meta-reception of crime and detective fiction are represented in the Romanian literary press of the mid-20th century, starting from a text published by Mircea Eliade in 1932 on the topic. In this regard, I look into the tension between the aesthetic mechanisms, the social functions, the ethical dimensions, and the prejudices surrounding the reading practices associated with this type of literature. Prominent authors of the time (Camil Petrescu, E. Lovinescu, Nicolae Steinhardt) manifest a productive and a composite reception of detective fiction as an imported literary genre. Louise M. Rosenblatt’s distinction between “aesthetic reading” and “efferent reading” as a part of the transactional theory as well as the “anti-literary” character proposed by Franco Moretti, represent theoretical elements that highlight the complexity of the practice of reading and place detective fiction in dialogue with a recurring axis of interpretation, more precisely the purity of the genre—a term that unfolds across primarily three different levels: the conventions of the narrative formula, the axiology of the novel, and the experience of reading as a leisure-time activity.
Keywords: detective fiction, Romanian readership, cultural press, the practice of reading, 20th century, Mircea Eliade.
Bibliografie
Acknowledgement: Acest articol a fost finanțat printr-un grant al Ministerului Cercetării, Inovării și Digitalizării, CNCS – UEFISCDI, număr de proiect PN-IV-P1-PCE-2023-1866/ DPRME, prin PNCDI IV.
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