Ethic vs. Aesthetic: Coordinates of Revision in Cultural Journalism between 1990 and 1993.

This paper analyses how the post-war autochthonous canon revision and the modification or preservation of the criteria underlying the latter's constitution polarized post--1989 literary journalists and critics' opinions. The supporters of preservation and perpetuation of the aesthetic criterion proclaim that the Romanian communist literature was a form of "resistance through culture" and that, consequently, the canon then built should be conserved along with the aesthetic autonomy thesis considered as its basis. On the other hand, the advocates of the more radical or moderate revision of the pre--1990 scale of values and the criteria that created it believe in the overlap between the aesthetic criterion and the ethical one or even in the subordination of the former to the latter. In this last case, of importance is the writers' attitude towards the former regime, their open or concealed collaborationism or, on the contrary, the resistance they managed to oppose to the political element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]