The Romanian Literature after 1990. Conceptual and Directional Modifications in the Critical Discourse

The essential political changes occurring after the 22nd of December 1989 in Romania resulted in significant transformations in the field of literature as well, under the aspect of thematic adaptations to the new reality, as well as in terms of a search for new artistic forms. However, the most important and the most rapid mutations were registered by literary criticism, which, while entering a new era, with a radically different political, economic, informational and existential makeup, is compelled to reconsider its attitudes, to re-evaluate the literature created before 1989, to find and make operational concepts appropriate for the current phenomena, to delineate and clarify the status of literature, directions and conditions for axiological existence under the new circumstances. Primarily, this period gave shape to two critical trends: a radical one, aiming to re-evaluate the canon and to update it in terms of a moral-political grid, and a moderate one, upholding the supremacy of the aesthetic criterion in any critical work.