Dimitrie Bolintineanu’s Manoil From Literary Convention to Moralizing Lesson

Abstract

This paper analyses the construction of Manoil, the eponymous hero of Dimitrie Bolintineanu’s novel, in relation to: a number of European fictional models present in the 19th century in the ‘very young’ Romanian literature; to the non-competitive rapport between the realist and romanticist conventions of the time in point of character authenticity/ verisimilitude, and also to the narrative strategies which include the diary, the epistolary novel and timid attempts at introspection. Set within the framework of the narrative structures of the sentimental epistolary novel, Bolintineanu’s character is constructed so as to illustrate the moralizing theme which holds that the representation of femininity may acquire both positive and negative connotations (and functions), intervening in the male character’s inner and outer journey as a destructive or, on the contrary, re-constructive force.