Mihai Ralea and the “Ethics of Reading” Foreign Writers

CRISTINA BALINTE

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Abstract: Romanian literature is based more on influence rather than on innovation. In such a context, the literary discourse is brokered by critics who dispose of authority and method, knowledge and information. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the monthly magazine Viața Romînească and its editorial board offered to educate the masses by presenting the seminal works of the most important foreign classic and contemporary writers. This paper aims to explore the reading method used in “Note pe marginea cărților” [“Marginal Notes”] by Mihai Ralea (1896‑1964), one of the most representative critics of the aforementioned ideological publication.

Keywords: interpretive patterns, Mihai Ralea, ideological criticism, J. Hillis Miller, ethics of reading, social sciences